Password copy to clipboard functionality adds the password to built-in clipboard manager (Klipper) in KDE on Linux.
Desired behavior: Copying a password will not store it in the clipboard manager. It should delete the password, skip storing the password, or overwrite the password stored in the clipboard manager after a period of time.
Other password mangers such as KeepassXC overwrite the copied password in the clipboard manager.
This is a security risk as passwords shouldn’t be in the clipboard manager.
Additionally, setting clear clipboard after 30 seconds in Bitwarden desktop app has no affect.
Below is a link to how this is implemented in KeepassXC:
Related topics + references
Are there any related topics that may help explain the need and function of this feature?
Are there any references to this feature or function on other platforms that may be helpful?
It seems this was implemented, since noticed it working this way around 7/2025. The password manager desktop app, with klipper in KDE, stopped supporting simultaneous clipboard storage of an item’s username and password.
However, this is actually a problem for some users, and was hoping to get this behavior augmented. While a copy action does put one or the other into the general clipboard, since they don’t appear in klipper, you only have 1 level of clipboard storage from which to paste. This disrupts workflow, since you can no longer copy a username and password pair in immediate succession, then switch to your browser, and paste them both into the login form.
It’s well understood that this can leave the contents lingering in klipper, but would rather resort to other devices to clear it if/when choose to. It’d be greatly helpful for this to be on/off configurable so that users relying on multiple clipboard contents can restore the old functionality, and thus resume undisprupted use.
There is more general support being added for this in Wayland, so it’s not KDE-specific anymore.
wl-copy recently got a --sensitive flag which should automagically work with anything built on wl-paste --watch
(See: https://github.com/bugaevc/wl-clipboard/releases/tag/v2.3.0, sorry only allowed one link as a new signup.)
They also support the x-kde-passwordManagerHint=secret mime type, so implementing it this way should enable this functionality in many clipboard managers.
