Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
All this is extremely cool, and it's about 95 percent of what I need from a clipboard utility.
Keyboard Maestro does not, however, let me manually edit a clipboard, nor does it offer
a way to sync clipboards across Macs (although it can send a clipboard from one Mac to
another). If it could do those two things, I wouldn't need another tool.
Launcher Utilities
In the previous chapter, I told you how to Use a Third-party Launcher to do things like
opening applications, playing tunes, and performing calculations. All the launchers I
mentioned—LaunchBar, Alfred (with the optional Powerpack), Butler, and QuickSilver—also
keep clipboard histories, so you can copy multiple things and then paste earlier clippings.
But, they also offer some other clipboard features worth mentioning.
LaunchBar and Alfred can both paste a clipping as plain text, preserve clippings when you
restart your Mac, and merge whatever you're copying with what's already on the clipboard.
In addition, Alfred lets you name your clippings. Butler refers to clipboards by their technical
name, “pasteboards,” and offers persistent clippings, named clippings, and user-definable
hot keys for working with clipboard contents.
Unfortunately, none of the launcher apps can filter clipboard contents, which I think is one
of the most useful clipboard capabilities.
Use an OS X Clipboard Utility
If you don't use a launcher like LaunchBar—or if you do, but crave even more clipboard
power—you have a bunch of options. I'll start with my personal favorite and then move on to
other choices.
PTHPasteboard Pro
I put PTHPasteboard Pro in a category by itself because it has, by far, the largest and most
elaborate feature set of any stand-alone clipboard utility.
Although Keyboard Maestro can do most of the same things (and is easier to use, for the
most part), PTHPasteboard Pro has one unique feature that I find incredibly valuable: it can
sync clipboards—including histories—across Macs. So, if I happen to copy a series of five text
snippets on my MacBook Pro and then move over to my iMac, I can still see, edit, and paste
them there.
PTHPasteboard Pro installs as a pane in System Preferences (see Figure 18 ).
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