For our cash, maybe essentially the most unheralded innovation of the pc age is Copy and Paste. Nobody thinks concerning the clipboard—that digital shelf the place copied textual content and pictures sit—as a result of it simply works. All of us use Command-C to repeat one thing and Command-V to stick it with out having to retype the textual content, reimport the graphic, or no matter. Copy and Paste is a big timesaver as a result of it allows you to reuse or construct on work already carried out.
What in case you might make Copy and Paste much more highly effective? With the fitting clipboard utility put in in your Mac, you acquire two main new options:
- Use clipboard historical past to entry beforehand copied information. Each time you copy one thing to the clipboard, it replaces no matter was there earlier than. With a clipboard utility, although, you possibly can see a listing of things you’ve beforehand copied to the clipboard and paste any one in all them, which is vastly simpler than discovering and copying the information once more. Clipboard utilities even protect your clipboard historical past throughout restarts.
- Filter or edit the information on the clipboard earlier than pasting. This functionality is helpful, as an example, in case you copied styled textual content however need to paste plain textual content, if there’s a mistake within the contents of the clipboard that will be exhausting to repair after pasting, or if you wish to change all double areas within the copied textual content with single areas.
Which clipboard utility is best for you will depend on what else you may want it to do, otherwise you would possibly even have one put in with out realizing it. That’s as a result of clipboard enhancements are a bit like blades in a Swiss Military knife: they are usually bundled into different utilities. You gained’t go fallacious with any of those clipboard boosters: the devoted clipboard helper Copy ’Em, the launcher LaunchBar, and the macro utility Keyboard Maestro. And whereas we’re highlighting these three, there are innumerable different nice utilities that supply related options.
Copy ’Em
($14.99) focuses on clipboard enhancements, bundling practically each clipboard-related function you possibly can need into a horny interface. It provides a full clipboard historical past, makes it simple to stick a number of objects shortly or in a batch, can rework pasted textual content in numerous methods, and allows you to arrange clippings into teams. It additionally allows you to edit textual content clippings, seek for textual content in your clippings, and ignore apps whose clipboard adjustments muddle your clipboard historical past. There’s even a separate model for the iPhone and iPad, must you need to share your clipboard historical past along with your different gadgets. Different well-known clipboard utilities embrace CopyPaste ($30), Paste ($14.99 per yr), and Pastebot ($12.99).
LaunchBar ($29) is a keyboard-focused launcher, so its major function is opening or switching to an utility or file by typing a hotkey adopted by a couple of letters from the identify of the app or file. That’s massively helpful in its personal proper, however LaunchBar additionally maintains a filterable clipboard historical past throughout restarts, allows you to paste a clipping as plain textual content, and may merge copied textual content with no matter is already on the clipboard. Different apps on this class embrace Alfred (with the non-compulsory £34 Powerpack), Butler ($20), and QuickSilver (donationware).
Keyboard Maestro ($36) is a macro utility, which signifies that it allows you to string collectively a collection of actions—copy this, change apps, click on there, paste, and change again, as an example—after which invoke that collection with a set off similar to a hotkey, menu command, timer, or system exercise. Keyboard Maestro provides lots of of actions and quite a few triggers, however from the clipboard perspective, it supplies a persistent clipboard historical past, a number of named clipboards, filtering of clipboard contents when pasting, removing of kinds from pasted textual content, and a user-specified hotkey for something you need to do.
No matter which of those utilities you select, you’ll quickly be juggling the contents of your clipboard like a professional…and losing quite a bit much less time!
(Featured picture by iStock.com/LightFieldStudios)
