systems-sandbox

Clipboard Inspector (Windows, C)

Overview

This project interacts directly with the Windows API to:

• Access and lock the system clipboard
• Identify the current clipboard owner (process + PID)
• Query process information using psapi
• Enumerate all available clipboard formats
• Extract and display clipboard data (Unicode and ANSI)

Unlike high-level tools, this program works close to the system layer, exposing how clipboard data is structured and managed internally.

Features

• Retrieves clipboard owner window and resolves it to a process ID
• Fetches process name using GetModuleBaseName
• Enumerates all clipboard formats using EnumClipboardFormats
• Differentiates between:
  • Standard formats (CF_TEXT, CF_UNICODETEXT, etc.)
  • Registered/custom formats
• Safely locks and reads clipboard memory (GlobalLock)
• Supports both Unicode and ASCII text extraction

How It Works

1. Opens the clipboard using OpenClipboard
2. Gets the current owner window via GetClipboardOwner
3. Resolves process ID with GetWindowThreadProcessId
4. Opens the process with OpenProcess
5. Retrieves process name using GetModuleBaseName
6. Enumerates clipboard formats
7. Attempts to read:
   • CF_UNICODETEXT
   • Fallback to CF_TEXT
8. Prints extracted data