GBoard update featuring UI improvements and clipboard available

After some details were found in an APK teardown last month, the update bringing significant UI tweaks and the new clipboard manager is rolling out to beta testers.

Google originally announced GBoard's forthcoming clipboard support months ago, and hidden functionality was found in the 7.7 release, and in the 8.0 beta.

Finally though, the fully functional clipboard update is rolling out and brings with it unexpected but very welcome UI tweaks also, though is still in beta for now.

Specifically, the UI tweaks involve switching sub-menu's like those for emoji and GIFs from slow and annoying horizontal pages to swift and large vertical lists, see thumbnail above.

Other tweaks include highlighting the enter/search button with the accent color rather than blending in with the background as it did previously, and quality-of-life alterations to some icons and layouts.

Of course, the biggest feature is the new clipboard manager, and I cannot believe it took Google ten years to add this to their official keyboard; it's just so darn useful.

If you enable it (and GBoard will prompt you to the first time you copy something), GBoard will temporarily (for 60 minutes) store every piece of text you cut or copy and allow you to easily paste any of your ‘clips' anywhere you want. You can also pin individual clips to store permanently if wanted.

My only minor complaint is that you must tap the (G) icon and then also tap the ellipses on the other side of the window and then finally tap the clipboard icon to reach the simple feature; why not just have the clipboard and all other similarly unreachable functions accesible from the same menu as emoji/gif/etc…?

Regardless, the feature is fantastic and well overdue and I see no reason for users to not join the GBoard beta to get it ASAP.