The other uses of a clipboard manager

You know that clipboard managers are useful tools, but you might not know how useful. They’re for much more than swapping two variable names around—turns out, having the ability to instantly persist any piece of text gives you a lot of new abilities. So here’s a list that covers the obvious, then the creative.

The obvious

• Text swapping becomes easy. Copy A, copy B; paste B over A, then recall A and paste it over B.
• Peace of mind. When your clipboard holds an important item you mustn’t discard, you no longer need to consciously stop yourself from copying anything. It’s OK if you forget and override that item; it’s OK to switch to a quick side-task that requires the clipboard, or to reboot your computer, or let someone else use it. Your clipboard is no longer fragile. To some people, this makes a world of difference; it’s one less thing to actively keep in mind.

The creative

That was the expected. Leaning on your clipboard manager, though, you can start using your computer differently.

• Long recall. If you can remember manipulating some piece of text, there’s a chance you copied it. So if you can recall just a few unique letters from it, that clip can be instantly recalled, using the clipboard manager’s search feature.
  An email address you copied? Often, just type the person’s name. A URL you recently shared on a chat? The website name. That Terminal command to clear a file’s quarantine flag that you keep looking up online¹? Try “quarantine” and it should be there.
  The list goes on! Without any upfront effort of your part, so much of the interesting text you manipulate can later be recalled in just a few keystrokes. The longer your clipboard history, the better, too; I’ve configured my clipboard manager to keep items for months, so if I remember something, it’s in there for sure.
• Instant backup. Ever lost text to a flaky Web form after spending half an hour composing it? Well, you now have the means to instantly backup any piece of text: ⌘A, ⌘C. That’s it! It’s so fast, you can do it all the time. And now you won’t ever again lose anything you’ve written. ⌘A, ⌘C. Your own instant, ubiquitous backup system.
• Regret-proof delete. This builds up on the previous item. Now, whenever I delete any piece of text that’s longer than a couple words, I do so using ⌘X. That goes for code, or unsent chat messages, or Web searches. Most of the time this is pointless; but often enough, I’ll be happy to save some thinking and typing, when I realize that actually, that first draft was in the right direction. Anything you delete by cutting can be undeleted, and there’s no cost to doing it.
• Photographic memory. And it’s not just about text: I’ll often take a screenshot of a settings windows right before I tweak something. ⇧⌘4, Space, then Control-click: I instantly captured a reference of how things were configured, before I went and messed them up. My future self often thanks me.

So many uses out of that single simple system! I think that’s really cool. I hope you find these ideas useful; and if you have your own schemes, please do share them with me on Mastodon or Bluesky. I’ll be happy to use my clipboard manager even more.

Appendix: What clipboard manager to use?

The app I personally use does the job brilliantly; however, it stores all of its data unencrypted on the file system, and the developers have stated they didn’t intend on fixing the issue, so I’m really not comfortable recommending it.

Fortunately, there’s plenty of clipboard managers out there! Find one that’s got very fast search, and a large maximum history size, and you’ll be set.