I haven't really used clipboard viewers in KM much, so this is probably a lame questions, but.. Is there a way to show clipboard history but only show a specific 'named' clipboard?
This is very similar to your last question.
Again, you seem to be conflating the clipboard history feature with named clipboards. They are entirely different kinds of features, as explained here:
In the other post I explained how you can set a single named clipboard to a current system clipboard. Is that sufficient for you?
The two questions are related, yes. In that either one would work for my purposes.
It seems that there is no way to bring up a clipboard history picker but ONLY for a named clipboard, is that correct? I can add things to a named clipboard, I just can't view / pick them.
Why would you want to pick from “a” Named Clipboard?
You can toggle the clipboard switcher to the Named Clipboard Switcher and it will show you the Named Clipboards by clicking the click icon on the left of the window. Or you can use the Activate Named Clipboard Switcher default macro or the Activate Named Clipboard Switcher action.
That's a big surprise. I never knew about that. (I.e., the existence of a named clipboard switcher.) Thanks.
One of us is confused (99% likely ME).
Here is what I want to do (for example):
- Select a code snippet that I want to use ALL THE TIME and copy (save) it to a clipboard named 'snippets' using the hotkey CMD+CTRL+SHIFT+S
- NOTE: over time the 'snippets' clipboard would be a collection of all the 'snippets' of code / etc.. that I want to recall over and over again.
- Recall the 'list' of those snippets via hotkey CMD+CTRL+OPT+S which would show me a 'clipboard history' view of the named clipboard 'snippets'.
I cannot figure out how to do THAT ^^^
Another case I'd like to do:
I'm working on filling out some form on a web site and the form has like 10 pages (mom's health care signup for example). I want to copy each page (screenshot) as I finish filling it out and save it to a clipboard that I need to reference later. I copy a field (medicare number) and I invoke a macro that saves it , along with a screenshot of the current front window to a named clipboard (temp_moms_medicare_form).
If I could do that I would create a bunch of named clipboard for different things, it would be amazing.
Am I mis-understanding named clipboards? Do they not hold history? Can you not push / pop onto a named clipboard?
Replying to myself
I believe this is the source of my problem. I am mis-understandings named clipboards... I thought they were stacks -- like the system clipboard. And that by copying something to a 'named' clipboard it was pushing it on a different stack than the system clipboard. This is not the case.
I am now determined to figure out if there is a way to do this though.. a challenge today for sure.
EDIT: I think I can approximate what I want (depending on the limit to the number of 'named' clipboards) if I come up with a naming scheme for named clipboards like snippet_<n>
and increment each time I save a new one, then use the named clipboard viewer to search for snippets by filtering for snippet_
I have an approach that will help you. I think you should examine this approach carefully. It bypasses the issue that KM actions require that clipboard names be hardcoded by using some token trickery to allow you to fetch a clipboard using an index number.
This works for fetching a token using an index number. I haven't tried to use this trick for saving named clipboard by using an index number, or for shifting all named clipboards by 1 (eg, _Clip1 = _Clip2; _Clip2 = _Clip3; _Clip3="") but this may also be possible using similar techniques.
Notice in the first and third actions below, the flag "Process Nothing" must be set.
Since code snippets are plain text, rather than what you are doing, I would store them as text - they don't need to be clipboards at all.
There are a couple ways I would do this.
- Use the Prompt With List action to prompt for them,
- Depending on the snippets, I would probably name them when they are created.
- The snippets could be stored in a Keyboard Maestro Dictionary
- Create a macro for each snippet. Use the technique from Create Text Expansions Macro to create the text expansion, but have all your macros use a single hot key and then Keyboard Maestro will use the Conflict Palette to select among them.
- Since you might end up with a lot of snippets, you might need to have multiple columns in the conflict palette, and you might not want that by default, so an alternative would be to have the created macros in a specific group (which they would be anyway) and a separate macro that uses the Show Palette of Macros action to show them.
There is no way to get create a Switcher-like window with a set of specified clipboards. You could create all the Named Clipboards with the snippets and use the Named Clipboard Switcher, but I doubt it's going to be a great result, and either of the above solutions will probably be better.
I made the same mistake. It took me weeks, rather than minutes, to rewire my mind to this. It was helpful to conceive of a clipboard history as something entirely separate from the system clipboard.
There is no master "clipboard history". There is no — afaik — system clipboard history. That stack is made by programs including Keyboard Maestro, and LaunchBar, and BetterTouchTool, and others, each of which makes its own database of clipped items and makes then available to the user in their own way.
There are many available snippet managers.
A robust database of clipped items comes with two costs dear to the user: the data must be properly collected and filed for retrieval, and the methods of retrieval must be learned. IME — including processing forms for a parent who no longer can — an easily searched simple clipboard manager can be better because 1. I don't have to partition the information on what I helpfully once heard called "a properly-formatted information carrier", and 2. I have nothing to learn. I search by what I remember or what is before me, it is retrieved, I re-use it. A clipboard history manager that shows you the formatted (as in text-formatting) clippings (a pre-view of what you will paste) is necessary , imho.
This is not sufficient for record-keeping, of course.
The snippet example was just one example, I really like using alfred's robust copy / paste / clipboard history system, but it too has its limitations. I want to re-think how I copy / paste.
[further reading for those who care]
So many times I have gone back through my clipboard history to remind me of what it was I 'did' (paragraph of text I cut from that draft, screenshot I took of a web page last week, etc...).
I basically want to choose.. when I copy something .. is this something I might need later? In a day / week / month / year / forever? Kind of a 'copy to archive' functionality with an expiration.
I think it might be time to investigate dedicated clipboard managers.
UPDATE: Circling back, it seems another tool that I already have (BetterTouchTool) has a clipboard manager that will suit my needs.
I blame Apple. To me, a clipboard is something that you keep pieces of paper in, but on a Mac a clipboard holds just one piece of paper... which is often referred to (including in KM's documentation) as "the clipboard"!
I don't really blame Apple (much) in this case. The matter only requires that mental rewiring because of how we can have (in KM, Alfred and some other 3rd-party apps) a "clipboard history" now. It's really a "clipboard's one-at-a-time content history".
When KM lets us use the "system clipboard" and other "clipboards", we have more options than Apple envisaged but one does indeed have to learn to "think different(ly)". I believe I have opined previously that consistently referring to "clipboard contents" rather than just "clipboards" in documentation might make the mental adjustment easier.
Nomenclature is very interesting here (I don't even want to get into how Apple really calls it a PasteBoard.. like.. what is that even?!?!)
Once the lightbulb came on for me that a 'clipboard' is a single thing, not the list of things, everything else in the KM documentation suddenly made sense. Clipboard History is just that... Named Clipboards are just that.. everything suddenly made sense.