If you’re using Yoink for iPad and iPhone’s Clipboard Monitor – which, if active, automatically saves anything you copy from other apps, even if Yoink is completely in the background –, you’re probably familiar with this dialog since iOS 16:
While this is useful information for apps you wouldn’t expect to be pasting at that moment, if you’ve activated Yoink’s Clipboard Monitor, you don’t want to have to confirm each and every single paste operation – it can get annoying very quickly:
I did file a feedback with Apple for adding an option to “Always Allow” pastes during the early days of iOS 16, and thankfully, in iOS 16.1, they introduced exactly that:
How to enable Always Allow “Paste from Other Apps” for Yoink.
– Open Settings.app – Scroll all the way down to Yoink and select it – Tap on Paste from Other Apps – Select Allow
With this enabled (you can revoke it at any time using the same steps), you go from the confirmation-hell above to this:
When copying now, Yoink’s Clipboard Monitor picks up the copied item right away, without confirmation. A notification that a paste occurred is displayed.
You’ll still get notified that Yoink pasted from the source app, but you won’t need to confirm the paste each time 🥲
Yoink for iPad and iPhone v2.4.1 is now available on the App Store. It’s a maintenance update, improving its Clipboard Monitor, certain areas of its UI, as well as general performance and stability.
Yoink is a file- and snippet “shelf”, in a “hold this for me while I do something else for a while” sort of way. Anything you can drag, copy, share or download, you can store in Yoink. When you eventually need it, you can access files either directly from within the app, Yoink’s custom keyboard, and Siri Shortcuts. It also syncs across your iOS devices via iCloud.
What’s New in Yoink v2.4.1?
+ Improvements to Yoink’s Background Clipboard Monitor
When active, the Clipboard Monitor will save anything you copy or cut in other apps, even if Yoink itself is in the background.
v2.4.1 now allows you to start, pause, update and end your Clipboard Monitor sessions with Siri Shortcuts. By “update”, I mean you can change its timeout, and which data type it should look out for (everything, links, texts or images).
In Settings.app > Yoink > Clipboard Monitor, you can enable Display Last Saved Item, which will show the item the Clipboard Monitor last stored in Yoink in its Picture-in-Picture overlay.
Also in Settings.app > Yoink > Clipboard Monitor, you can disable Confirm Monitoring, which, when starting the Clipboard Monitor from within Yoink, will forego all confirmation dialogs and start the Clipboard Monitor right away, as requested by a number of users.
The Clipboard Monitor can now be started from Yoink’s Home Screen Quick Actions
Lastly, instead of terminating the Clipboard Monitor entirely when a time out occurs, it now pauses instead, making it easier to restart it.
+ General Improvements
Downloads now show their state if Use Small Previews is enabled in Settings.app > Yoink > Appearance
Downloads now show the size of the download, if available
The UI for renaming files has been revamped to use more space
Editing a URL now refreshes its icon
Yoink’s Share extension now works faster
Maps/Location items are now a separate option in Yoink’s filter (accessible by tapping Showing All at the bottom)
Many bug- and crash fixes
Where can I get Yoink?
Yoink is available for iPad and iPhone on the App Store – a one-time purchase of $5.99 / € 5,99 / £ 4.99. It requires iOS 14 or newer. To sync across your iOS devices, an iCloud account is required.
Yoink for iPad and iPhone v2.3.5 introduced Background Clipboard Monitoring, which, if enabled, stores anything you copy, even if Yoink itself is in the background, effectively giving you a clipboard history.
With version 2.4, I’ve improved it by adding the ability to only monitor for specific data types, and to temporarily pause the monitor.
Background Clipboard Monitoring in Action on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15
Captured on my iPad using iPadOS 15, lightly edited for brevity but otherwise unaltered
For demonstrative purposes, I kept Yoink in the foreground as a Slide-Over app, just to show what gets added when. But all of this works even if Yoink is not visible on your display and put in the background.
In the video above, I enable Yoink’s clipboard monitor and consecutively copy an image, a link, and some text; all get stored in Yoink. I then use the Picture-in-Picture’s fast forward button to tell Yoink to only watch for text. With that option set, I again copy an image, a link, and some text; this time only the text is stored in Yoink. I click the fast forward button again to make Yoink only save links, and repeat the copy-procedure of an image, a link, and some text; now, only the link gets stored in Yoink. A final time I click the fast forward button to have Yoink only watch for images and – you guessed it – when I copy an image, a link and some text, only the image is added to Yoink.
Next, I pause the clipboard monitor by using Picture-in-Picture’s Pause button. Now, Yoink does not react to any copy events at all. By pressing the Play button in PiP, I reactivate the clipboard monitor.
Notes on the monitor’s behavior
The clipboard monitor attempts to ignore sensitive data, like passwords. For this, it refers to the pasteboard data types proposed at nspasteboard.org, and checks if there are any password-type app names contained in the pasteboard data types, like “1password”, or “keychain”, for example. If encountered, Yoink ignores the copy-event and waits for the next.
As for energy consumption, it is very light-weight. The images you see in Picture-in-Picture are static – it doesn’t play video, it doesn’t play audio. Yes, Yoink will continue running in the background because of this, but all it does is check your pasteboard every couple of seconds (and not even the data directly, only a “changeCount” value provided by the API). If a change has occurred, it will save the content to Yoink and to disk. Syncing – if enabled – only occurs when the app comes back to the foreground, so there is no added network activity.
Other Changes in Yoink v2.4
– I improved Yoink’s compatibility with GarageBand. Dragging an audio file to GarageBand from Yoink now works correctly – Picture-in-Picture for arbitrary content now properly displays Map location items – I fixed a memory leak and a couple of app crashes
Pricing and Availability
Yoink is available on the iOS App Store as a one-time purchase, for $5.99 / €5.99. It is localized in English, German, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean, with more languages to follow.
