Learn What a Clipboard Utility Can Do

You might think you can do just fine without a clipboard utility, but remember: people used to think that about cars and microwave ovens, too! Here are some of the groovy tricks you’ll be able to perform:

• Access your clipboard history: By default, every time you cut or copy something to the clipboard, whatever was there before disappears. By contrast, every utility mentioned in this chapter maintains a clipboard history, which is to say you can view a list of dozens or hundreds of previous clipboard items and paste any of them at will. (I especially like using a keyboard shortcut, such as ⌘-Control-V, to paste the just-previous item from my clipboard history—that way, I can easily copy two different things and then paste them both consecutively.)

• Juggle multiple clipboards: What if you had not just a single clipboard (with a historical record of its contents) but two, five, or a dozen clipboards—each with its own name? If you need to copy things independently of each other and refer to them by name or category, multiple clipboards may be just the thing.

• Store and reuse clippings: Normally, your Mac’s clipboard is cleared when you shut down or restart. Most clipboard utilities preserve not only your current clipboard but also your clipboard history across restarts. Some even let you manually save and name clippings for future reuse.

• Edit a clipboard’s contents: Say you’ve copied something you intend to paste multiple times—but you find an error in the copied text. Some clipboard utilities let you edit what’s on the clipboard before you paste it, so that every pasted copy will be correct.

• Filter a clipboard’s contents: Perhaps you’ve copied styled text but want to paste it as plain text. Or maybe you want to do something far more elaborate—perform find/replace operations or mathematical calculations on the copied text, add to it or trim it, change its case, or manipulate it in some other way. All this is possible with a utility that can filter a clipboard’s contents.

Still can’t quite imagine how you’d use a clipboard utility? Let me give you some concrete examples of how I do:

• Copy the title of an article on the web, copy its URL, and then paste the two in sequence without having to switch back to a browser

• Cut paragraphs or bullet points from several different locations in a book, and then paste them all together at a new spot

• Copy the URL for a product at Amazon and paste it with my affiliate link baked right in

• Copy raw HTML code but paste it with Markdown formatting, or vice versa

• Copy a large chunk of text and paste it with any duplicate lines removed

The last three items in this list are examples of filtering, which saves a tremendous amount of tedious work.

Use a Macro or Launcher Utility

You may already have a utility on your Mac that includes many or all of the clipboard enhancements you’d like—macro utilities such as Keyboard Maestro and launcher utilities such as LaunchBar often have such capabilities.

I’m all in favor of multipurpose tools, and if one of these meets your needs, that may be the best solution for you. On the other hand, if you need extra features (or don’t have a suitable macro or launcher utility), I’ll tell you about several standalone clipboard tools ahead in Use a macOS Clipboard Utility.

Keyboard Maestro

I talk about Keyboard Maestro’s macro capabilities later, in Control Your Mac with Keyboard Maestro; there’s also a coupon at the end of the book for a 20% discount. For now, I want to mention its clipboard capabilities:

• Multiple, named clipboards

• A history for your primary clipboard (Figure 29)

• Filtering the contents of any clipboard while pasting it, according to rules you set up

• Optionally pasting plain text, even if you copied styled text

• Access to persistent clippings that you can see and use even after restarting your Mac

• User-definable hot keys for working with clipboards

All this is extremely snazzy, and it’s nearly everything I could want from a clipboard utility. Keyboard Maestro doesn’t, however, let me manually edit a clipboard, nor does it offer a way to sync my clipboard history across Macs (although it can send a clipboard from one Mac to another).

Use a macOS Clipboard Utility

If you don’t use a launcher like LaunchBar—or if you do, but crave even more clipboard power—you have a bunch of options. Years ago, my favorite clipboard utility was an app called PTHPasteboard Pro, which had a truly amazing set of features. Unfortunately, PTHPasteboard Pro was discontinued, so I now use either Keyboard Maestro or LaunchBar (both of which are running on my Mac all the time anyway) to provide a clipboard history and other clipboard tools. (Which one I use at any moment depends on my exact needs.)

However, if you want a standalone clipboard utility, there are many—in fact, dozens—from which you can choose. Back in 2015, I rounded up six top picks in my Macworld article Copy, Paste, Repeat: Finding the Best Clipboard Manager for Mac. To make a long story short, my favorite at that time was an app called Copy’em Paste. Nowadays, though, I’d lean toward either Copied or Pastebot, both of which offer a wealth of clipboard management features (including a 500-item history, filtering, and a clear user interface) and come in versions for both macOS and iOS. Still other clipboard utilities worth considering include:

• Clipboard Center

• CopyClip 2

• CopyLess 2

• CopyPaste Pro