shadowClipboard - A simple multi-clipboard utility

Jan 13, '03 09:58:37PM

Contributed by: robg

shadowClipboard iconThe macosxhints Rating:
8 of 10
[0 to 10 lights; 10 = perfect!]

shadowClipboard is another neat little application from stupidFish Programming, who also brought us shadowGoogle. shadowClipboard is similarly single-minded in its role, which is to provide you with up to 10 clipboard save spots. Multiple clipboards, when done right, are a great productivity tool ... and even though it's only beta, shadowClipboard does them right (at least based on my needs).

When I first launched the application, I didn't think anything was happening, as no user interface opened, no splash screen appeared, and it wasn't listed in the dock or the force quit dialog box. Then I glanced up to the menubar and saw the small clipboard icon, and clicked on it to reveal the simple and effective user interface.

shadowClipboard works entirely in the background, and provides 10 empty spots for copied items to temporarily reside. Each time you hit copy, one more empty spot is taken; if all the spots are filled, the newest item knocks the oldest item off the list. You won't actually see any of this happening, though, as shadowClipboard works behind the scenes (which is the way I like it).

When you want to use one of the items in the 10 spots, or just see what all you have in your collection, just click on the menubar icon, and a graphical display of all 10 clipboard spots drops down from the menubar. Click the one you want, and it's copied to the clipboard, ready for use.

As I cut and paste a lot of stuff between the development and production sites, and back and forth between browsers, shadowClipboard fills a definite need for me. It's not the most powerful clipboard manager out there (for that, I'd recommend Script Software's CopyPaste, which has a ton of amazingly useful clipboard features). But if you just want a simple, basic, multiple-clipboard manager, you might want to give shadowClipboard a test drive. Although it's beta, I've had no issues with it on two machines.

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