Some app developers have promised to alter their behavior. Along with TikTok, 10% Happier and Hotel Tonight are reducing their use of the clipboard. There are also apps that make smart use of the clipboard. Pixelmator, for example, only extracts data if there is an image. It also won’t be surprising if there are more changes thanks to monitoring the iOS 14 clipboard, which Apple will credit Mysk and his colleague Hal Bakry.
However, the concern is not just that this handful of apps are misusing the keyboard. There is a possibility that many other applications exhibit similar behavior. It is also unclear how these apps behave on Android. TikTok said the antispam feature that generated alarms on the iOS version is not present on Android, but did not say if it accessed the clipboard in Google’s operating system for other reasons. Regardless of your device choice, it is a good idea to avoid copying confidential data unless necessary and to clean the clipboard (such as copying harmless text) when copying valuable information.
