These new icons are a hidden ChromeOS feature I absolutely love

For the past couple updates of ChromeOS, a new feature showed up that is quiet, out of the way, and has now become indispensable to my daily workflow. That feature is what I’ll simply call Multi-Paste Icons, and it has made the simple task of copying and pasting content from one place to the next on my Chromebook a far simpler, cleaner process.

Not too long ago, Google introduced Multi-Paste to ChromeOS and I’ve been a daily user of that feature since it rolled out. Though it took my hands and my brain a few weeks to get in the habit, I’ve now moved 100% to SEARCH + V as my paste shortcut versus the more-traditional CTRL + V.

The reasoning is simple: SEARCH + V gives you not just the last item you copied to paste, but an entire list of the last 5 items you copied. In multiple ways every single day, I find reasons to use this shortcut. Sometimes it is on purpose and I’ll copy a few things back-to-back and paste them where needed using Multi-Paste. Other times, I’ll simply forget that I had something copied already and will copy a second thing before getting around to pasting the original. But Multi-Paste makes that a non-issue, and that’s why I’m glad it is here.

A new addition to Multi-Paste

But the latest addition to this already-useful feature comes in the form of new icons that accompany your 5 items in the Multi-Paste view. Before, you got a simple list of 5 strings of text; now you get the same list with icons beside each item to clarify what sort of content it is you are looking at.

As you can see in the list above, I have a nice mix of text-only, links, and images that can all be pasted the same way as before (click with the mouse cursor or select with the up/down arrows on your keyboard), but you now have the addition of an icon beside each that helps you quickly identify what is what.

With the paste menu being small, you clearly can’t see all the text that you’ve copied, so these small icons do a great job at separating the content and making it clear what exactly is available for insertion. When moving fast and pasting images, text, and/or links, it is super helpful to have these icons available for choosing the right thing to paste the first time, every time. And though it has been around for a little bit at this point, I’m still happy to see it each and every time I go to use the Multi-Paste feature, and thought it might persuade some of you to give it a try soon. It’ll really rejuvenate your workflow!