There’s a keyboard shortcut I use everyday, hundreds of times: Cmd + C, Copy. Everyone copies something every single day. Now, if you copy a lot of stuff and you use Mac OS, you should have noticed the lack of a built in clipboard manager which stores all of your copied data enabling you to paste them later.
Fortunately there are many 3rd party clipboard managers that can do this: in this roundup I’ve collected 15 of the most famous clipboard apps available for Mac OS X.
What I was looking while searching for a good clipboard manager was an easy to use app, yet powerful and with a good user interface.
Enjoy!
iClip sits at the edge of your screen recording all the stuff you copy. It supports text, images, whatever. There are “slots” which show you a quick preview of the items stored in your clipboard, which could be really useful. The problem is, I found iClip buggy and slow: maybe is due to the recent Snow Leopard 10.6.2. update, but I couldn’t get the application to work fine (I mean, the Preferences didn’t work).
Moreover, I believe the interface it’s too much cluttered, see it by yourself.
This application surprised me a lot. Both beacuse it’s unknown (I should thank Macupdate which helped me discover it) and because it’s really features rich. First, there are two “modes”: Simple and Advanced Mode.
Simple mode is a HUDish black translucent window which appears on screen and lets you have a glimpse at the items stored in your clipboard. You’ll have a live preview of text, pictures and folders that you’ve copied, allowing you to quickly choose which item you want to paste. To paste, you just have to hit Enter.
Playin’ around with the Preferences, you can decide to paste everything as Plain Text (every formatting will be removed, online pictures will be pasted as the image address), increase the clipboard history, backup your clipboard data and switch to advanced mode.
Advanced mode changes the whole look of the application and inserts some extra information fields about the stored items. The app itself becomes a dropdown (you can choose to use a “windowed” mode anyway) which slowly comes down from the menubar; you can see the item Type and how many times it’s been pasted. But what really surprised me it’s that shadowClipboard hasn’t been updated since a long time but it’s freakin stable. No crashes, no nothing.
And there’s so much more about it (clipboard sets, shared clipboard) that makes shadowClipboard one of the best findings of this last periods.
Maybe the developers will look again into it.
Single user license — 10.67 EUR
Here’s another great application, no doubt about it. Probably, Clips is one of the most complete and features rich managers out there, together with shadowClipboard. But, the first thing you’ll notice about clips it’s the interface: it’s sexy guys. From the quick HUD panel to the gorgeous board, everything is slick and the animations smooth.
Pretty much like shadowClipboard you have live previews of text formatting and images. While the quick panel could come in handy for many, I prefer the bigger board which allows me to have a glimpse of everything stored in the clipboard. You can change the layout of the board, flag items, store abbreviations, type to start searching.
Great application.
License: €19.99
A very simple application which sits up there in the menubar and constantly records your clipboard activity. Very few features, many peole like it. But trust me, if you want a free app there’s better stuff around.
Open source.
Ugly and poor. Tried 30 seconds, trashed.
The weird thing is that many people suggested me to try Savvy Clipboard.
I once tried iClipboard a while ago and I just couldn’t stand it at all. It installs as a system preference pane which brings up a HUD panel at the edge of your screen. There are live previews and nice boxes for storing items. The problems is I couldn’t use it due to its vertical layout: I found difficult to find stuff I copied and the whole look is a little bit messy.
Smoking Apples loves it (together with iClip) so I guess we have different tastes. I’d move on.
Single user license $29,99
There’s a clipboard module available for QuickSilver, but it’s rather limited. Use it only if you have very basic needs.
And here comes the application I’m using since a long time, Clipmenu. Clipmenu installs as a menubar item which allows you to store clipboard data and text snippets. While this last feature it’s absolutely useful to me (I have a lot of default snippets I use for mails) the clipboard system itself is simple and well developed.
There’s a simple menu which drops down from the menubar and lets you access an unlimited number of items; you can also invoke the clipboard / snippets menus via a keyboard shortcut.
There are previews for text and images (seems like this is a standard) and possibility to organize copied stuff in folders. The application is a freeware (amazing!) but it’s far beyond many “premium” apps.
Highly reccomended.
Free.
A simple open-source clipboard manager which lets you only store text items. At least, there’s QuickLook support.
Developed by theescapers (the same devs of Flux) Stuf is a simple menubar app which store clipboard items. There are a few options to play with but it’s not as complete as other applications like Clips. I can’t understand why the didn’t make the “centered interface” (the HUDish one, see screenshot, the only one available, given its awesomeness.
You can set up a very good shared clipboard though.
Seems like Launchbar (from the same developers of LittleSnitch) added a clipboard feature in its last update. I haven’t tried it myself, so I’d like to quote this Smoking Apples post:
“if you’re looking for something integrated into your workflow, Launchbar has it implemented right inside the UI. Press Cmd+K and you’re presented with a list of recent clips. There’s also a very interesting “ClipMerge” feature. ClipMerge allows you to merge the previous clipboard contents with the current contents. Really helpful if you want to mass copy text from a web page, or move multiple files spread across your hard drive.”
Interesting. I’d like to give Launchbar a try in the future, stay tuned.
Single Seat License €24
Corkboard is a pretty unique application: instead of displaying a list of your stored items, it takes a Dashboard-like approach, putting an overlay on your desktop which displays thumbnails of text / pictures. The general feeling is very Mac OS X, but I have many doubts on its usability.
Still, I couldn’t try all the features as they weren’t enabled in the evaluation copy.
CuteClips seems a little bit outdated and doesn’t offer a large set of features. Just as many other apps I’ve rounded up in this article CuteClips installs a menubar item which – when clicked – displays a list of your clipboard items.
Very straightforward.
$15
I guess it needs an update. See the screenshot below.
I didn’t try Clipboard myself, but my friends over at SuberApps wrote an excellent review back in January.
Doesn’t seem an app I could like, anyway.
At the end of the show, I’m really satisfied about the applications I’ve discovered. For the past few months I’ve been using Clipmenu, which is free, and it’s a great, lightweight, useful app. But since I’ve tested shadowClipboard and Clips something has changed: they’re slick apps, with tons of features and some cool Mac OS eye candy. I’m definitely giving Clips and shadowClipboard a try.
You should do the same.
#1
That's what WalrusCP said 9 months ago:
Just to comment on iClip: the developers have stated they are no longer actively developing it. Hence the issues using it in 10.6, which are not likely to be fixed anytime soon.
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#2
That's what Mike said 9 months ago:
Hi. Another great roundup
. Personally I used Clipmenu and it is perfect app and its for free so its a nobrainer 
. But now I use Launchbar clipboard like you have written… it integrates into your workflow 
[Reply]
storiesofmac Reply:
November 16th, 2009
@Mike, This Launchbar is getting very intriguing. What about the app launching itself? Is it better than QS?
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Mike Reply:
November 16th, 2009
@storiesofmac, well I never really used QS so I cant compare, but LB gives me everything I need. Its really worth to try at least.
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storiesofmac Reply:
November 16th, 2009
@Mike, Yeah, definitely. Thank you.
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#3
That's what Andy Tuba said 9 months ago:
Yup, I’ve got ClipMenu running too. Simple, handy, sufficient for my needs: accessing the last coupla clips and some snippets. I tried iClips when I got a license via MacHeist or something, but it reminded me of an overdone PC game put out for the PR department for some scifi movie in the ’90s.
If I weren’t broke, I’d probably get ShadowClips or ClipMenu =D
[Reply]
storiesofmac Reply:
November 16th, 2009
@Andy Tuba, The best part:
"it reminded me of an overdone PC game put out for the PR department for some scifi movie in the ’90s."
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#4
That's what Piotr said 9 months ago:
Big thanks,
I was using JumCut and didn’t know there are other clipboard apps.
I really liked the simplicity of JC but since ClipMenu is same easy and simple and keeps in track other stuff than txt it IS the hoice.
And it is steel in the same cool price
[Reply]
#5
That's what Techslacker said 9 months ago:
It always amazes me in these roundups for clipboard mangers that CopyPaste gets left out and it’s been around forever.
http://www.scriptsoftware.com/copypaste/
[Reply]
Neuronical Reply:
November 17th, 2009
@Techslacker,
I use CopyPaste Pro and it’s fantastic. I was expecting to see it included in this roundup. They passed over one of the better clipboard managers.
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RipVW Reply:
December 21st, 2009
@Techslacker, I agree. I use CopyPastePro all the time. You can paste with or without formatting (styles), you can edit the clips, you can archive clips, you can email the clips and it’s really neat to see your clips parade by as in CoverFlow.
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#6
That's what Brooke said 9 months ago:
nice roundup! one that wasnt mentioned, the one I use now, is iPaste http://www.iggsoftware.com/ipaste/
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#7
That's what Jen Clark said 8 months ago:
I used CuteClips only because I got it for free, until I discovered Launchbar had one. The others look good too, but I really love Launchbar and it doesn’t use too many valuable system resources. Thanks for the article!
[Reply]
storiesofmac Reply:
December 21st, 2009
@Jen Clark, Thank you. I’m testing Launchbar since a few weeks, feels great.
[Reply]
Jen Clark Reply:
December 21st, 2009
@storiesofmac, I hope you enjoy Launchbar, it integrates so well with Things and adding things into BusyCal and so much more. I love it!
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#8
That's what BigSilverBullet said 8 months ago:
Really the best clipboard manager has to be CopyPaste Pro, has a great integration with finder
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