I want to completely and totally disable the clipboard utility/app that resides in the system tray and keeps copies and history of my clipboard. Also I want to disable **ANY** clipboard manager like klipper etc. How can I do that?

I have arch linux with plasma 5.4.0.

Can't you just remove it from the system tray?

Hans wrote:Can't you just remove it from the system tray?

No, there is no option to disable it from the sys tray at all. I check the right click menu and found nothing. That's why I made this thread.

I can "hide" it from the systray settings but not disable it.

nektarios wrote:I can "hide" it from the systray settings but not disable it.

Of course you can disable it in the systray settings.
Just untick the checkbox in "General"->"Extra Items".

wolfi323 wrote:

nektarios wrote:I can "hide" it from the systray settings but not disable it.

Of course you can disable it in the systray settings.
Just untick the checkbox in "General"->"Extra Items".

No I can't. It doesn't *DISABLE* it, it just merely hides it. To prove this I made a test, I "disable" it in the systray settings (it got removed) and I did some copies of some words in my clipboard by pressing CTRL+C and then I "enabled" it and click on it and the popup showed all the copying to clipboard history. Thereofre it was never disabled just hidden.

How do I completely disable it?

kill the klipper process - I do not fully understand this topic, but there should be an option to quit klipper from its context menu? (Got nuked with new SNI?)

luebking wrote:kill the klipper process - I do not fully understand this topic, but there should be an option to quit klipper from its context menu? (Got nuked with new SNI?)

Unfortunately there's no klipper process running. I don't know which process controls this clipboard history but I want it gone permanently asap. I consider this an extreme security vulnerability (as I copy and paste sensitive information all the time). in my opinion this "feature" should be disabled by default, if not completely gone with measures preventing it too.

Yupp, seems some genius moved klipper into the plasmashell processs.
While it can be disabled, it still tracks the clipboard (eg. you can copy, close the window, still paste. Also copies show up in the clipboard when re-activating it)

There indeed seems no way to stop that and you can *not* cheat MaxClipItems=0 in klipperrc.

File a bug against plasmashell.

luebking wrote:Yupp, seems some genius moved klipper into the plasmashell processs.
While it can be disabled, it still tracks the clipboard (eg. you can copy, close the window, still paste. Also copies show up in the clipboard when re-activating it)

There indeed seems no way to stop that and you can *not* cheat MaxClipItems=0 in klipperrc.

File a bug against plasmashell.

Ouch.

OK I'll do the bug report, I hope it gets noticed and addressed. Should I file it as a security concern too?

nektarios wrote:To prove this I made a test, I "disable" it in the systray settings (it got removed) and I did some copies of some words in my clipboard by pressing CTRL+C and then I "enabled" it and click on it and the popup showed all the copying to clipboard history.

You're right.

But if you logout after disabling it and then login again, it should no longer track your clipboard. I.e. when you enable it again, the things you copied in between should not show up.
At least that was my experience when I tried it just now.

Privacy != Security - it doesn't really qualify for a CVE.

You should of course mention your privacy concerns as trigger and valid reason to be able to effectively disable the feature.

@Wolfgang - doesn't seem to work here (at least not for a plasmashell restart)

luebking wrote:Privacy != Security - it doesn't really qualify for a CVE.

You should of course mention your privacy concerns as trigger and valid reason to be able to effectively disable the feature.

@Wolfgang - doesn't seem to work here (at least not for a plasmashell restart)

Yes that's what I decided too, it is privacy not security, I'll change the title of my bug. For archiving purposes here it is: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=352171

Thanks.

luebking wrote:@Wolfgang - doesn't seem to work here (at least not for a plasmashell restart)

Hm, it seems to work here, even if I only restart plasmashell.

Just in case, my steps:
- click on the clipboard applet and clear the history (just to avoid confusion)
- disable the applet in the system tray settings
- kquitapp plasmashell
- run plasmashell again
- mark some text (I tried with and without explicitely selecting "copy")
- enable the applet in the system tray settings again

After I do that, the history in the applet is still empty.

If I do the same without quitting and restarting plasmashell, the selected text while it was disabled does show up in the history when I enable it again, just as reported.

This is on openSUSE 13.2 with Qt 5.5.0, KF 5.13, and Plasma 5.4.0.

Part of the problem I am having is that plasmashell app is interfering with Klipper. I'd rather use Klipper.

remove /usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.clipboard folder