UIPasteboardgeneral

UIPasteboard.general is the general, system-wide pasteboard provided by iOS for copy and paste operations. It is a shared resource that allows data to be transferred between apps as well as within a single app. In Swift, it is accessed as UIPasteboard.general, while in Objective-C it is obtained via [UIPasteboard generalPasteboard].

The general pasteboard supports common data types such as plain text, URLs, and images. Developers can read and write these data by using properties like string, url, and image (for example, pasteboard.string = "Text" or let image = pasteboard.image). For more advanced use or multiple data formats, data can be stored with type-specific methods, such as setValue(_:forPasteboardType:) and data(forPasteboardType:), where pasteboardType is a Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) like "public.utf8-plain-text".

In addition to the general pasteboard, iOS provides named pasteboards that can be created with UIPasteboard(name:create:). Named pasteboards isolate content from the general pasteboard and are useful for app groups or extensions that need a separate clipboard.

Usage considerations include privacy and security: because the general pasteboard is accessible to other apps, it should not contain highly sensitive information unless necessary. When appropriate, prefer using named pasteboards or in-app data sharing mechanisms to minimize exposure.

Overall, UIPasteboard.general serves as the default clipboard on iOS, enabling straightforward cross-app copy-paste of common data types, with optional support for named, isolated pasteboards for more controlled sharing.