You'd never know it, but one of the most potential-packed parts of your favorite Android phone is a feature you rarely actually see.

It's mostly invisible by design, in fact — and yet, if you teach yourself how to tap into it, you'll save time, increase your efficiency, and feel like a total smartphone sorcerer.

The feature of which we speak is the humble-seeming Android clipboard — the simple virtual space where anything you copy stays tucked away out of sight 'til you're ready to use it.

If you haven't spent much time thinking about the Android clipboard, believe me: You aren't alone. But my goodness, are you ever missing out.

So allow me to introduce you to some of the most advanced and easily overlooked productivity boosters hiding away in your phone's invisible holding space. Copy these tricks into your noggin, and before you know it, you'll be slashing all sorts of wasted seconds out of your day.

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First up is a feature specific to Google's own fully featured Android software, as seen on its self-made Pixel phones (and if you don't own a Pixel, don't worry: Almost all of the tips after this will work on virtually any Android device!).

So Pixel palmers, take note: Anytime you're in your phone's Overview screen, you can copy any text from any app thumbnail, right then and there — regardless of whether it's the type of text you'd typically think of being copy-friendly or not.

And that's it: The text you selected will now be on your system clipboard and ready for speedy pasting wherever you want it.

All convenience aside, what's especially cool about this trick is that it allows you to copy text from things like system menus and even text from inside images in a thumbnail, where such actions wouldn't usually be possible.

Speaking of which...

No matter what kind of phone you're using, you can snag text out of any image — be it a screenshot, a photo of a document or whiteboard from the real world, or even a snapshot of a turtle with a top-secret message scrawled onto its shell — simply by opening up the Google Photos app.

At that point, you can either tap "Copy text" to bring the text onto your Android clipboard for future pasting — or you can tap "Copy to computer" to copy the text directly onto a connected computer's clipboard for pasting anywhere on that front. (It probably goes without saying, but you'll need to have a computer where you're actively signed into the same Google account in Chrome in order for that option to appear.)

And while we're thinking about Lens...

Google Lens is one of Android's most underappreciated superpowers. In addition to its integration in Photos, Lens can actually look for text right in front of your face and then copy it onto your clipboard, directly from the real world.

Pretty spiffy, wouldn't ya say?

So far, we've thought about fancy ways to get text onto your Android phone's clipboard. Now it's time to start thinking about all the things you can do with that text once it's present.

Up first: In addition to the handy "Copy to computer" option built into Lens, Android's got a simple system for sending text straight from your clipboard to any other Android device or Chromebook in your area with a couple quick taps.

It's a freshly rolled-out feature for the current Android 13 version, so you will need to be running that software in order to use it.

Provided you've got Android 13 on your device:

And if you don't have Android 13 or you need an easy way to share text with other kinds of computers, fear not — 'cause our next clipboard trick is exactly what the geek-doctor ordered.

The Android 13 clipboard sharing setup is nice and all, but there's an even more versatile way to connect the clipboard from your Android phone to the clipboard on any kind of computer you're using.

The secret is a clever little app called Clipt.

This is one of my all-time favorite Android hacks. You can read all about the ins and outs of the setup and how to make the most of it in this separate guide.

The trick we just went over is fine and dandy for sharing stuff from your clipboard to other environments — but what about when you want to find text you've copied right within Android?

The quickest way to access your system clipboard on your phone is via Google's excellent Gboard keyboard.

If you aren't already using Gboard, install the app and set it up — then:

Now, one more bit of one-time setup before we get this show a-goin':

With all of that out of the way, you'll start seeing two helpful clipboard-related additions:

And another trick worth surfacing in that same Gboard clipboard interface...

You can actually save important items within your Android clipboard area and then pull 'em up anytime, anywhere for easy ongoing access.

It's a great way to keep commonly used text snippets or maybe even screenshots at your beck 'n' call and available for instant pasting whenever you need 'em.

And it couldn't be much easier to set up:

You can pin multiple bits o' text and/or images into that area, and all it takes is a single tap of your sticky fingie insert any pinned item in any text field you've got open.

And finally...

When we think about our phone's clipboards, most of us tend to focus on text. But it's worth emphasizing: You can copy images onto your Android clipboard, too, and then paste 'em directly into lots of different places.

Try this:

And hey, how 'bout that?!

Whatever image you copied will instantly be inserted into your message, without any extra effort required.

Not bad for an area of Android that's almost always out of sight, eh?

Get even more advanced shortcut knowledge with my free Android Shortcut Supercourse. You'll learn tons of time-saving tricks for your phone!