Some utilities let you transform a clipboard’s contents as you paste.

All the clipboard managers I tested include a search feature, too. (iClipboard has an arrangement for every taste, giving you a menu, a pop-out drawer, a Dock menu, and a browser that’s much like the Command-Tab app switcher.) From there, you use your mouse, arrow keys, or further keyboard shortcuts to select an item and paste it. Which display format your clipboard manager uses is a matter of personal preference. When it comes time to paste a previous clipboard entry, you invoke the clipboard manager, typically by clicking a system-wide menu or by pressing a keyboard shortcut that displays a floating window listing recent clipboard entries. I don’t think I’ve ever needed to go further back than 100 items.Ĭlipboard Center (shown), CopyPaste Pro, and iClipboard can merge clipped snippets together, pasting them as a group. But even the lowest limit should be fine for most people. You can generally set an arbitrary limit in order to preserve disk space and improve performance. CopyLess limits you to the last 100 items, Cop圜lip lets you store 230, CopyPaste Pro goes up to 999, and the others can store as many as you like. The basic task of a clipboard manager is to maintain a clipboard history. I also looked at four launcher utilities and a macro utility, all of which have clipboard management features-more on those in a moment. For this roundup, I narrowed the choices down to six top contenders: Jérémy Marchand’s Clipboard Center ($5), Apprywhere’s Copy’em Paste ($5), FIPLAB’s Cop圜lip (free), maxbor’s CopyLess ($5), Plum Amazing’s CopyPaste Pro ($30), and Chronos’ iClipboard ($30).

Mac clipboard manager recorder