les pensées insouciantes

I’ve been a Mac user and aficionado for over 20 years.

Here’s an app that’s among the first things I install whenever I get a new machine.

CopyPaste Pro, by Script nee Plum Amazing Software, $30

The Original, Essential, Multiple Clip Utility for Mac OS X

Save/Edit/Manipulate/Store Everything You Copy, Cut and Paste

CopyPaste is the original multiple clipboard utility for the Mac. CopyPaste has been massively popular since its first release. What has made it so widely appreciated? Usefulness. CopyPaste magnifies and multiplies the usefulness of the humble clipboard. It does things that the creators of the clipboard at Apple never dreamed of.

One of the revolutionary features that came with the Mac in 1984 was the unique ability to select text or pictures, etc., then copy that data into a clipboard in order to hold that content temporarily and then paste it in the same application or in a different one. The clipboard was used to transfer all kinds of info between programs on the Mac. Later, this feature was adopted in other operating systems.

A few years later, CopyPaste was the first utility to enhance the Mac by giving it multiple clipboards. This meant that more data could be moved in less time. CopyPaste also allowed these multiple clipboards to be displayed, edited, archived and saved through restarts. CopyPaste revealed the untapped potential of the Mac clipboard.

I feel crippled when at a machine without it.

Highlights:

• Works in the background.
• Persistent/retrievable clip archives for oft-used bits of information (usernames, e-mail addresses, signatures, etc.)
• Saves a history of all copied items on-the-fly. There’s no real limit to the amount of saved items remembered. I have mine set to 50. If you use applications like Photoshop, just be conscious of what’s in the clipboard, as you can quickly eat up RAM if you copy, say, several large images in a row. Individual clips can be deleted for security/performance reasons.
• Contextual menu (right-click) support for quick retrieval of clips (Oops: Apparently, contextual menu support has been removed in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. You might want to look into iClipboard, by Chronos to get this functionality in 10.6. My home machine is running Leopard, so I had not noticed. Shame. This was a killer feature for me. I originally used a multi-clipboard app called AutoTextTyper with the Classic Mac OS that was just a contextual menu item. It is the main method I use to interact with the app. I rarely need to touch the keyboard while browsing the web). Oh well, at least there’s…
• Hot-key support for quickly browsing and retrieving clips using a combination of keys, i.e. Command + V (hold) or Command + VV. With no contextual menu support, this is the next best way to work with the program. Note: Even with contextual menu support under Mac OS X 10.5 or earlier, the CopyPaste Pro menu WILL NOT appear in Firefox. Firefox is not very “Mac-like,” in that it does not jive with a number of system-native services, e.g. Keychain(!) and Contextual Menus. It’s one of the main reasons I use Safari over Firefox. I am infinitely more efficient browsing with mouse access to my clip archive. Think: blogging, filling out forms/logins, etc.
• Several handy clip tools for manipulating text, i.e. unwrapping text, changing case, removing styles, etc.

Seriously — If the original Clipboard was revolutionary in 1984, having multiple, persistent clipboards is a quantum leap forward.

But don’t take my word for it… Sir James Galway, World Renowned Flautist says:

“I cannot imagine a computer without CopyPaste.”

Go get it.