How to get a list of clipboard meta types

Questions & Suggestions
1

I'd like to get a list of all the types currently present in the clipboard. E.g.

['public.rtf', 'public.html', ...]

Is this possible? I've been hacking at this and trying to use JavaScript for Application but I'm not sure if I'm going in the right direction. I can apparently get a list of types but can't figure out how to write out what I have (I keep getting "can't convert type").

function getItems() {
  return $.NSPasteboard.generalPasteboard.pasteboardItems
}

// this gets SOMETHING but I don't know what - just that it's not undefined
const to = getItems().firstObject.types.firstObject;

Eventual goal: if there are objects of a certain type on the clipboard then don't blow it away. In my macro (used hundreds of times a day) insert-by-pasting is faster than insert-by-typing, but if there is OneNote data in the clipboard then there's no way to preserve it with insert-by-pasting. So, I want to use the fast version if any other app has pasted to the keyboard, but the slow version that preserves the clipboard fully if OneNote has pasted. So I need to see if a specific type ("com.microsoft.OneNote-2010-Internal") is in the general pasteboard.

(The KM script editing environment is pretty limited too - I'm definitely open if someone has a recommendation for an improved editor. E.g. no line numbers to compare to error messages, no autocompletion or mouseover type inspection.)

2

Have you taken a look at the JS code in this macro:

?

1 Like
3

Awesome, that works well enough for what I need! There are still a number of missing metadata items that I can see in Clipboard Viewer, but by checking the text of that result I can get what I need.

My specific solution:

In my case, this will nearly always distinguish between "copied OneNote page" and "copied anything else":

Doesn't contain: plain-text as propertyList
Contains: Calibri Light [from the title]
Contains: content=OneNote.File

The only false positive is where both a title and other content (date/body) are copied from inside a ON page, in this case the macro will still think a page was copied. But that's a rare situation. This is good enough to get a very good performance increase by speeding up the macro and not blowing away the clipboard in almost all cases where the pasted content doesn't include OneNote pages.

4

The shortest route to a complete list of types might, I think, be something like:

(() => {
    'use strict';

    ObjC.import('AppKit');

    return ObjC.deepUnwrap(
        $.NSPasteboard.generalPasteboard
        .pasteboardItems.js[0].types
    ).join('\n');
})();

The Clipboard Viewer macro limits itself to types with a textual representation, but if you copy something in a graphics app, for example, you might (from the snippet above) get a fuller list like:

OmniGraffle

com.omnigroup.OmniGraffle.GraphicType
com.adobe.pdf
public.png
public.tiff
dyn.ah62d4rv4gu8y24psrrbgc25pkvu1k2k

Sketch

com.bohemiancoding.sketch.v3
com.adobe.pdf
public.tiff
com.bohemiancoding.sketch.v3.tempfile
dyn.ah62d4rv4gu8y4y4xsv6023nukm10c6xenv61a3k
dyn.ah62d4rv4gu8y4y4ftb2g86xym72hk4ptr33zauxtqf3gkzd3sbwu

Pixelmator Pro

public.file-url
public.tiff
com.pixelmatorteam.pixelmator.sourceimage.position
com.pixelmatorteam.pixelmator.sourceimage.canvas.size
com.pixelmatorteam.pixelmator.documentid
2 Likes