Free Clipboard History Managers and Clipboard Extenders

Extend your clipboard, cut/paste more than just the latest snippet

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Free Clipboard Extenders and Clipboard History Managers

Clipboard extenders or managers allow you to extend the facility of your system's clipboard beyond its default ability. On some systems, the system clipboard only allows you to cut/copy one fragment onto the keyboard. The next time you copy or cut another snippet, you overwrite the existing clipboard contents. These free clipboard history utilities allow you to keep a history of all the cuts and copies you have made to the system clipboard, and typically also provide you a simple keyboard shortcut to retrieve earlier copies or scan through the list and select any of the previous copies you like. The clipboard managers also typically provide a facility (sometimes optional) where you can save your clipboard history for previous use.

If you are looking for a commercial clipboard manager, you might want to consider AceText. Besides the usual clipboard history features, it also has numerous other useful features, including modifying/editing the clipboard, taking/jotting down notes, keeping a digital scrapbook of frequently used things you can easily paste into other applications, creating and publishing a knowledge base or FAQ, etc.

Note: only Windows and Mac OS X clipboard extenders are listed. Systems that use window managers like KDE (such as Linux the free BSDs) already have support for multiple clipboards built-in.

Free Clipboard History Managers and Multiple Clipboards

Clipboard Magic (Windows): This clipboard manager lets you cut and paste multiple text snippets as well as store/retrieve those clips for future use. It also has a feature called "series and row paste" which allow you to fill multiple form fields from the clipboards by simply hitting a single hotkey. Other things that you can do include sorting your saved clipboard entries, inserting and deleting specific items from the clipboard history, etc. At the time this was written, Clipboard Magic only works with plain text cut and paste clips.
ClipX (Windows): This free Windows clipboard history manager provides you with an easy way to retrieve previous cuts/copies into your keyboard so that you can paste them into another (or the same) application. The keyboard shortcut is configurable. Simply cut and paste the usual way (Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V) for your normal operations. If you need to paste an older copy or cut, invoke it with Ctrl+Shift+V and the history of your old cuts will pop up. Use the arrow key or mouse to select the one you want and the text or image or whatever will be pasted. If you have a bitmap in your clipboard history, the clipboard extender is able to display a small picture of your bitmap in its popup (if you wish). The program also provides a facility where you can save and load your clipboard history, as well as an automatic persistent history, where your cuts are saved. This persistent history is optional (you can disable it). The number of previous cuts/copies that it keeps is also configurable. If you wish, the program also supports searching through the clipboard history.
TenClips (Windows): TenClips calls itself the "ultimate multiple clipboards for developers". It lets you copy up to 10 clips into the clipboard and lets you switch between those clips and paste them into your applications. You can configure the keyboard shortcuts, paste only the "purified text" (without formatting), paste text in small letters (lowercase) or capital letters (uppercase), etc. The tray icon shows the currently selected clipboard. It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Hamsin Clipboard (Windows): This Windows clipboard extension utility tracks up to ten previous clips which can be returned to the clipboard or directly pasted into your application. You can also paste several copied clips one after the other automatically and save commonly-used clips.
CLCL (Windows): This free clipboard caching utility for Windows provides support for all clipboard formats, configurable keyboard shortcuts, display of pictures in the pop-up menu, etc. The program comes with source code.
Ditto (Windows): This is an extension of the standard Windows clipboard. It supports the saving of any type of information that can be put into the keyboard including images, text, HTML, custom formats, etc. It allows you to sync clipboards on multiple computers, search and paste previous copy entries, sync clipboard data over the network in an encrypted format, display a thumbnail of copied images in a list, etc. It uses an SQLite database (see the Free Databases page) to store old clips.
ArsClip (Windows): This free Windows clipboard utility monitors and tracks entries made in the clipboard. You can select a previously copied item from the history and paste it using a configurable hotkey. It allows grouping of permanent items and supports a form mode for pasting multiple fields. Source code for the program is provided.
YC3 (Windows): This Windows clipboard extension tool saves past 200 text and RTF, 20 BMP and metafile and 200 URL clipboard entries. It supports unlimited boilerplate clippings, stripping of unwanted characters, a global hotkey, no size limits for clippings, internationalization, etc.

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Free Clipboard History Managers and Extenders