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Monitor clipboard in C#

The best way of monitoring the data in the clipboard through your application is by adding your application’s window to the chain of clipboard viewers so it can receive the WM_DRAWCLIPBOARD message when the clipboard data is modified.

In order to do that we need to make use of the Windows SetClipboardViewer and ChangeClipboardChain APIs in order to monitor when the WM_DRAWCLIPBOARD message triggers.

First we will need to pinvoke SetClipboardViewer and ChangeClipboardChain and WM_DRAWCLIPBOARD and also set the variables that will hold the value for the next window in the chain that is required when we will want to stop our window from monitoring the clipboard. Place the following in your class.


Add your window to the chain of clipboard viewers so we can monitor the clipboard. Place the following either in your form’s constructor or in any of the on load events.

Next will be our WndProc method override that will monitor the window messages. Note that there are a few more DataFormats that can be used, so feel free to experiment.

And finally it’s cleaning up time. Make sure to remove your window from the clipboard viewers chain before closing the form.

Note: There is a new Windows function now that is the recommended one if you want to target machines that are running Windows Vista and up. For more information take a look at Monitor for clipboard changes using AddClipboardFormatListener.

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7 Responses to Monitor clipboard in C#

  1. Chris says:

    Thank you
    Works great!!!!!!

  2. Jerry Chou says:

    Works perfectly!!!

  3. Nmelss says:

    So if i want to use this in a console application “this.handle” isn’t available, and base.WndPrc isnt either. Do you know of a solution ?

  4. Riffer says:

    This is really a great solution and has helped me a lot with a program that has to capture data from the clipboard by sending ctrl+c to other applications.

    Thank you very much!

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