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Everybody uses the clipboard. It is one of the best features of a computer. But there is one major downside. You can only really have on item on the board at one time. For more of a history of clipboard items you need to use something like Clips. It’s an excellent program at showing you what is on your clipboard and gives you loads of features to let you really customize and take advantage of a clipboard history.

Copy and Paste

Before I start this review I must say that this program has hundreds of features. It takes advantage of the raw power of a Mac with lots of eye candy, overlays and effects. What you see in the screenshots is just how I have set this program up. You could do it in a completely different way. That what is so good about this program. You can customize it, with the preferences, to really meet your needs.

The idea behind this program is simple. You copy something to the clipboard, anything. Clips will then pick this up and store it in its history. You can then copy other things, adding them all the time to Clips’ history. You can then, through the wonder of a click, retrive a past clipboard item and paste it into what every you were doing. Simple.

There is three main parts to this program. Most do the same thing. The main areas are the overlays, which is two separate items, and a window which you can use to organize your clips more effectively. The overlays are designed so you can quickly add a clipboard item into the document you are using. There are two types, the full screen version, which acts in a similar method to the dashboard overlay. Where you can easily see all of your clips. As well as this there is a smaller panel which floats on top of other windows, which you can use as a quick shortcut to paste items.

In the image above you have two main areas. The left hand sidebar is used to quickly organise the clips you have taken. They are organized by application, Spaces and then any special clipboards such as flags and a special save area. The main area is an overview. You can use this to see exactly what you have copied. You get a small screen shot of what the items you have copied. As well as this you can also customize how you view the clips, for example in a grid as shown above, randomly or in a circle. Every time you click on a small square as shown in the image above it will paste it into your current document.

You can also use Clips as a normal application. Here you can use more of the advance features of the application without accidentally pasting items all over your work. Some of the advance features include abbreviations, flagged and dropped clips. You use abbreviations to save time in pasting items. For example you could type “lorem” and it could paste an entire story of Lorem Ipsum. Flagged clips are clips which you can save for later. Dropped clips is used as a drop box. You want to save something for later. You simply drop it into the drop box. In the application interface you can also interact with the program using Quicklook to see extra details and a whole load of other small features.

Conclusion

I really like this application. It uses all of the technologies that are good for Mac. Quicklook, overlays etc. As well as this it is really well thought out. It has plenty of shortcuts for you to use. Lots of way to access and use the program. There are a couple of problems with this application. For example the defaults shortcuts tend to overtake existing ones on your computer, such as Quicksliver, so it is really annoying if you don’t catch the on setup and you have to go and change them. As well as this the application interface as shown above doesn’t act as an application. For example it doesn’t have a dock icon and you can’t Command + Tab into it. This, personally, is really annoying and spoils what is normally a good program. Try it out and tell me what you think in the comments.

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