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I am often copying and pasting various tidbits of information, and then forgetting to save it. I would copy something else and lose what I had in the clipboard before.
Is there some sort of built-in way to view the history of the clipboard, or do I have to install a program?
Josh Hunt
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 20 095
71
There's a multitude of applications that do this, but no built-in one.
FlyCut, an open source fork of Jumpcut
brew cask install jumpcut.
Thor
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 3 562
1Flycut is awesome! – Dolphin – 2014-07-24T11:37:27.400
Clyppan was excellent, but is no longer under development and has some bugs in Yosemite. – Dalin – 2015-04-20T13:41:59.127
Now I'm in love with this one -- http://www.apprywhere.com/copy-em-paste.html -- though I was last using Flycut, which does work nicely but it's a bit too simple. Copy 'Em Paste is insanely good, IMHO... of course, everyone has different needs, especially for this kind of util
– Dan Rosenstark – 2015-05-14T00:29:21.1772This may not be a requirement for everyone, but neither Clyppan nor Jumpcut have some time-limited history. (I just opened Clyppan after not using it for some time, and it gave me my history of May 24th...) – Arjan – 2009-08-02T12:59:35.137
Does Flycut support Rich Text Format content, or am I missing something? ---Oh it doesn't.
– Franklin Yu – 2016-11-08T18:26:43.8203Clyppan is now proprietary... – thSoft – 2011-08-04T23:29:41.020
28
I realise that the question has been answered, but here is another recommendation for a clipboard history manager:
Menubar item:
Hovering menu (hotkey):
Apart from the menubar and floating window, it also has customisable 'actions' that allow you to manipulate text as you paste it (e.g., uppercase everything), and support for snippets to hold commonly pasted text.
In my experiences it is easily the best of the simple clipboard managers.
redacted
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 2 400
Love it, looks like the one I used on Windows. – Vadorequest – 2016-10-24T15:52:05.477
ClipMenu seems to have gone away? The download links all 404. :( It really is a great little utility. – Adrian – 2017-08-04T15:57:46.083
1https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7917215 – Alex – 2019-02-11T14:35:26.597
1
Download links are dead but you can still download it from here -> https://www.dropbox.com/s/mz2v2psimbwdfql/ClipMenu.app.zip?dl=0
– Ehsan Khaveh – 2019-02-19T09:48:46.2371This is a good one. – ybakos – 2010-12-21T17:46:47.553
1I like that this one seems to handle images, and show them inline in the history too. – bacar – 2011-08-20T14:02:41.770
Its simple and free. – Mark Levison – 2011-11-18T02:54:13.370
1I'm also a fan of ClipMenu. I have Command+Shift+V bound to bring up the menu. – Rob Dyson – 2012-05-22T19:24:17.587
Simple ? Are you kidding ? – Nicolas Barbulesco – 2013-10-20T08:40:54.443
24
The best I've found is Alfred, which has a phenomenal clipboard history functionality as part of its ($15) Powerpack. Among its features:
I bought it for other reasons, but I use the clipboard history every few minutes throughout my day, so for $15 it was a pretty big win.
Dan Udey
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 439
13
I was used to ClipMenu, because I need a list of history items visible I don't want to waste time browsing thru history. However ClipMenu was not updated for years now, and dropbox links don't work anymore. I was able to find backed-up dmg file on one Japanese website, but what eventually solved my problem is a clone of ClipMenu called Clipy
So you can download and install it manually or via brew cask
brew cask install clipy
Aleksandar Pavić
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 319
2Thank you for the brew version, it's just amazing! – DimaSan – 2018-11-12T00:48:45.733
10
I've tried them all and the best experience and best ongoing support has been from LaunchBar.
Best feature: 40-item clipboard history. It makes writing code so much easier.
Jason Robb
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 109
9
The Tentacle
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 4 621
2I find that any time I have the QS clipboard plugin enabled that almost every QS action becomes unbearably slow. – wfaulk – 2014-12-10T18:03:20.520
1+1 So hard to explain QS, impossible to live without it – trolle3000 – 2010-05-25T12:44:36.463
1this is amazing! – Pierre Spring – 2009-08-22T14:36:42.397
2Both the QS Shelf and Clipboard managers have been broken since Leopard came out. They will open continuously and annoyingly until you shut them off. – Brandon – 2011-09-25T20:35:32.190
3I don't know about Leopard, but on Mountain Lion Clipboard History works without a problem. – user664833 – 2012-10-14T18:50:47.990
Works on Mountain Lion for me... Copies text, links (as links), even images!
The docking/sticking to edges does not work well at all, however, esp. in a multimon setup. Top edge would work (albeit not predictably) if I wasn't using SecondBar. For now I'm just sticking to cmd+space,L to bring it up (you can hotkey it on its own I think via triggers, just don't want to). – notacouch – 2013-03-19T23:00:46.770
7
I wrote CmdVees to scratch my own itch.
It works like a stack. You can copy several items in sequence (like any clipboard manager) but when you hit Cmd-v, the pasted item is removed from the stack. LIFO. It may sounds weird, I guess it depends on how your brain works. For me is very natural.
It can be configured to work like a queue, FIFO, for the other brain model.
Also, it splits entries in history by time, hiding older items in a submenu:
To be honest I don't use the menu more than once in a while.
It has other goodies like joining items or swap top of the stack with selection.
It's a commercial app but feel free to ask me for a license if you fall in love with the trial and you can't afford it.
djromero
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 171
Yes, different brains work different ways. I often copy something and want to paste multiple instances of it. Going back to the source and copying it again would be possible but tedious. Does this software support my use case? – Scott – 2017-03-01T21:00:37.437
@Scott No, I considered it but couldn't resolve how to do it easily (just involving keyboard shortcuts). – djromero – 2017-03-02T11:50:13.513
Looks great - but website doesn't exist and other sites only offer Trial version. Good for 15 days if you're not on the US app store – Bysander – 2018-06-06T16:50:32.760
7A stack is not FIFO. – Nicolas Barbulesco – 2013-10-20T08:53:14.580
This supports LIFO and FIFO – circuitry – 2014-06-18T19:25:42.110
4
Alfred's Powerpack let's you view your clipboard history for up to three months! It's not free but well worth it as it is a launcher (among other things) which is actively under development.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz77777777777
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 111
3
Paste:clipboard history manager for your Mac
jayxhj
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 131
Best GUI clipboard manager by far, and the only modern option offered here (for 2016). – erquhart – 2016-10-06T18:35:14.557
2
Supports at least 2,000 items in the history. (I've tried even more, though it does start to slow down at some point; a function of both the maximum number and the maximum size per entry, I expect.)
This is extremely handy when you're constantly jumping between a whole bunch of different systems, and those shorter histories (in other apps) just keep rotating around and losing stuff.
BTW: Another feature is that you can select to promote an item up to the top of the history, when pasting that item - keep important stuff from dropping off the bottom.
And it supports multiple pastebuffers, processing of text (such as pasting unformatted, or all upper / lower case), searching the history, etc. - lots of features.
Marc Farnum Rendino
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 21
The link gives a Peugeot 404. – Nicolas Barbulesco – 2015-02-22T08:03:40.057
1
BetterTouchTool (a paid tool with a free trial) now has an integrated clipboard manager / clipboard history viewer:
https://www.boastr.net/bettertouchtool-clipboard-manager/
This is a nice option if you're already using BetterTouchTool for other things, since it saves you from installing (yet?) another utility program. In addition to clipboard history, I'm currently using BetterTouchTool to:
Jon Schneider
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 893
0
There is also a free one that allow me to view window from which I can drag and drop items from one long list. It's copypaste pro. Alfred also should do it.
Masster Universum
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 1
Welcome to Super User. Please see How do I recommend software in my answers? In particular, at a bare minimum, say where to get the software.
– G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica' – 2015-06-14T21:51:30.757-2
Go to finder, at the top press the edit button and there should be 'show clipboard'. That will show everything you have copied from when you turned on your mac. It's inbuilt by the way.
rando123
Posted 2009-08-02T10:05:38.550
Reputation: 1
13It only shows the latest entry to me – mauhiz – 2016-01-03T01:20:04.473
2I've tried a few 3rd-party programs, but actually found none that clears its history based on time rather than based on some number of entries. I don't want my Mac to remember the last xx copy actions, but want it to remember the last xx minutes. (Or, even if the number of entries is limited: at least remove the history after some time.) – Arjan – 2009-08-02T12:26:26.867
3@Arjan - sounds like you should write that app. – Darren Newton – 2009-08-03T12:12:08.743
@Arjan or hire somebody on fiverr to do it.. used to be $5 might be a bit more now but not much – barlop – 2019-07-02T00:23:28.337