{"id":41483,"date":"2023-12-18T17:06:49","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T22:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=41483"},"modified":"2023-12-19T11:04:09","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T16:04:09","slug":"the-case-for-clipboard-managers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/18\/the-case-for-clipboard-managers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Case for Clipboard Managers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Snell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[Over] the two decades of modern macOS, Apple has addressed most of the basic needs of the average user. At the end of that process, I ended up discovering that the most glaring feature omission in all of macOS might just be its lack of a clipboard manager.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Let me walk you through the reasons why non-nerds should care, why Apple should consider making this a built-in macOS feature, and what apps you should try out if you decide to go for it.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Once you know<\/em> that copying something to your clipboard doesn’t destroy what’s there, your use of the clipboard can become far more extensive. You lose the fear of wiping out something important, replaced with confidence that you can grab something in case you want it later<\/em> and stash it away in the clipboard history.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

The classic MacOS had the Scrapbook app<\/a>, and since Mac OS X 10.0 we’ve had hidden, partial support via the kill ring<\/a>, but Apple has never made this a real feature. I’ve been using LaunchBar’s Clipboard History feature for years, and it’s great. But it would be nice to have multiple clipboards on iOS, too, and Apple is in the unique position of being able to extend Universal Clipboard<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Federico Viticci<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The lack of Mac-like clipboard management is one of the things I miss most from macOS when I work on my iPad. To give you an example: as I was putting together this post on Threads tonight with some tips<\/a> I discovered, I realized I had to go back and double-check something else in the Threads app, so I copied my post (Threads doesn’t support saving as draft yet) and closed the composer UI. A few minutes later, I had already forgotten that my “draft” was stored in the clipboard, so I copied something else, and with no way to get my original text back from the iPadOS clipboard, I had to rewrite the post from scratch. That wouldn’t have happened if I was using macOS (or if Threads supported post drafts, but that’s a different story).<\/p>

The clipboard management situation is even gloomier on iPadOS and iOS since, unlike the Mac, third-party apps can’t run with background privileges to monitor changes to your clipboard. Again, I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t want to make a modern API for this with all the necessary privacy controls for users. Because of these limitations, over the years I’ve seen the market for third-party iOS and iPadOS clipboard managers dry up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2023-12-19): Cabbage<\/a>:<\/p>\n

More indie apps don’t need to be Sherlocked<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think there would still be room for indie apps if Apple added OS support for multiple clipboards. My concern is that Apple would do it in a way that pulled the rug out from them.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Snell: [Over] the two decades of modern macOS, Apple has addressed most of the basic needs of the average user. At the end of that process, I ended up discovering that the most glaring feature omission in all of macOS might just be its lack of a clipboard manager.[…]Let me walk you through the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2023-12-18T22:06:52Z","apple_news_api_id":"72ad9192-3a16-426a-9d67-bfb391a654fe","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2023-12-19T16:04:11Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Acq2RkjoWQmqdZ7-zkaZU_g","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31,2321,467,30,32,2385,1670],"class_list":["post-41483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-ios","tag-ios-17","tag-launchbar","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macos-14-sonoma","tag-pasteboard"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41483"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41489,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41483\/revisions\/41489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}