Top 10 Mac Productivity Enhancements: Page 8

Price: Standard version, free; Pro version, $20

Have you ever cut a chunk of text, tried to paste it a short while later, and then realized that what you thought you had on your clipboard had already been overwritten? Or wanted to copy three or four separate items and paste them all at once, without going back and forth multiple times?

I encounter these kinds of situations all the time, and the solution is a utility that gives you multiple clipboards. Copy or cut something, it’s on the clipboard. Copy something else, and that’s also on the clipboard—but the first something isn’t gone. Keep copying as much as you want, without losing those clippings. That’s the basic idea of PTHPasteboard.

It works in the background, silently adding everything you cut or copy to its own list of clipboards. You can display a floating palette that displays the contents of each clipboard (whether a few or hundreds) and paste directly from any of them; you can also search your saved clipboards for just the piece of text you need.

The Pro version adds the capability of syncing clipboards between computers; it also lets you filter the contents of a clipboard before pasting it (say, to remove formatting or insert line breaks after a certain number of characters).

Runners-up: iClip ($29); Savvy Clipboard ($12) Butler (mentioned earlier) also offers multiple clipboards.