A Brief Introduction To ClipTools

ClipTools is the completely free Mac clipboard manager and text utility from Gary of MacMost. It can remember your previous text copies, you can perform calculations and special functions on selected text, create complex Smart Clips, and much more. This intro video covers version 1.5.1, current as of December 2024. You can get ClipTools and read about all of its functionality at https://macmost.com/cliptools

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here's a brief introduction to ClipTools.
So ClipTools is a utility app that you can get for your Mac in The Apple Mac App Store. You can find it by searching for ClipTools. It's available worldwide and it is completely free. There are not even any in-app purchases or ads. Once you install it you'll find it here in the Menu Bar. It's a Menu Bar app. So the only place it exists is up here. There won't be any kind of window or introduction screen that opens up. It just appears here at the top. If you don't see it keep in mind that you have limited space here on the right side of your Menu Bar. Even if you show some empty space here, the Mac limits how many items can fit here. So if you don't see it, even though ClipTools is running, you may need to use Command Drag to remove some items that you don't really need up here. For instance, these items I'm removing are easily available here in Control Center so I've made a little more room so ClipTools can fit. 
Now at its most basic ClipTools is a Clipboard Manager. So if I were to select some text and Copy it using Edit, Copy or Command C, then I can look at ClipTools and see the last item that I copied here at the top. But the whole idea is it saves more than just one. So, if I were to select some more text and use Command C to copy I can see now I've got that here at the top but I also have the previous one. Normally with the Clipboard you can only paste what you copied last. But with ClipTools or other clipboard managers you can select something that you previously copied and have it pasted in. So I'll copy a third thing here and I'll see there are three items. If I want to paste the previous one, not the current one that is in the clipboard, I can simply select it and you can see how it pastes in there. 
In addition to just being able to paste you can do a variety of different things using modifiers. For instance using Control and Shift will paste Plain. In other words it will remove any formatting. So if you copied something from a webpage and it is in a certain font, maybe color, maybe style, you can use this to paste it as plain text. 
If you want to remove something from the list you can use Shift and Option. That allows you to remove the item. 
Now you find out about all this stuff by going to the one Help Page for ClipTools. Just macmost.com/cliptools. You'll find everything you need to know here. So for instance for Handling Clips you can read about all of the modifier keys that you can use. You can do a variety of different things including even Hiding Clips so you don't see them when you choose the Menu. You can also Group Paste. So you can copy, say, three items and then paste all three of them at once. You can read about all these different features by going through the Guide on this page. You can always access it in ClipTools itself by going to Instructions & Feedback. 
Now when this list here gets too long, let's copy a bunch of other things here, you can see there's not enough room for all of that. But a submenu, More Clips, appears. So this keeps everything kind of neat and tidy. You see the top three here but you also see more under More Clips. You can always customize this and lots of things about ClipTools by going to Settings. In Settings I can set the total number of clips for it to remember but also the number that are shown in the Main Menu before needing to use the More Clips Menu. 
You can also Save Clips. So let's go to one of these clips like this one here. If I hold Option you can see it changes to Save. Once I use that once I'll have another submenu called Saved Clips. I can Save as many clips as I want. That will stay there permanently. They won't drop off the bottom as I copy more. 
But the whole idea of ClipTools is to add a variety of different tools in addition to a Clipboard Manager. So for instance the next items down are Paste Date and Paste Time. So if I use Paste Date you can see here it pastes today's date. The format though is decided in Settings. You go to Settings here you can select a Date Format and also for the next item Paste Time. You can specify exactly how that looks. You can go to the ClipTools Webpage to see how to use the various different characters here represent parts of the date and time and to find it like you want. 
The next item is Paste Lorem Ipsum. This is sample text that is used maybe to fill up a document while you're arranging it and to act as a placeholder for the text you'll eventually put in that box. So you can use a variety of different options here to add sample text like this to your document. 
Next we have what is probably the most powerful part of ClipTools which are Smart Clips. Smart Clips allow you to have clips that have little commands in them that do various things. So let's add a new one here. You just type your Smart Clip in here. It could just be plain text like a normal clip. But with certain commands you can do things. Like for instance the Pick command allows you to choose from several different items. In this case three. The Date Command allows you to insert a date in a format. In this case just the day of the week. You can even Add or Subtract a number of seconds from the current time to get that result. The rest is just regular text here. Some I'm going to Add this and now when I select this Smart Clip here it will first prompt me for one of those items and I can select one. Then the other part is to include the day but two days from now. So you can see I'm recording this on a Wednesday and it puts Friday there. To see everything you can do in Smart Clips go to the webpage. So you have the ability to select one of the previously copied clips, you can ask for something, you can have a random item put into a spot of the text, you can use the current selection, you can replace text from the selection, you can Add lorem ipsum text, you can add all sorts of special actions and change case and do calculations and all sorts of things in Smart Clips. There is a ton of different stuff you can do. 
Note that you also have Smart Files. Smart Files work just like Smart Clips but they allow you to put the clips as little text files in some folder you choose. So you can edit them in a text editor of your choice. 
By the way, if you find these videos or ClipTools useful you can join the more than 2000 others that support them at Patreon. You get exclusive content, course discounts, and more. You can read about it at macmost.com/patreon. 
Now another thing that ClipTools can do is calculations. So you can choose to paste Calculation here and then it prompts you to enter in a calculation. Like that. I'll press return and you can see it pastes the answer there. You could also select something, like this, select it like that and go to Calculate Selection. It will replace the selection there with the results. You can look through a list or previous calculations to paste them in. You can also change a setting so that it actually pastes the expression as well as the result. There is even the ability to use Stacks which allow you to copy several different numbers and then do things like paste the sum or the average of all of those numbers. 
Now with text selected there is a variety of things you can do in here. You can get selection statistics, like that, but you can also go and change case. So you can make everything uppercase, everything lowercase, you can capitalize every word, or every sentence. You can even choose Headline Case which will try to make a title out of it. So some words are capitalized and others are lowercase. In Settings you can determine which ones. You can even do fun things like alternate case, random case, or switch to characters that make it look like the text is upside down. So here I'll choose Capitalize all words and you can see how it does that for this selection. 
There's also a bunch of selection actions right here. So you can do things like Strip html tags. You can do URL encode, decode. Different things for programmers. You can sort lines. If you've got a bunch of different lines you can sort them alphabetically with this. A key one here is converting to Number Words. So, if you've got a number like this you can select it, go to Selection Actions, choose this and you can see how it converts it to words. 
Now let's talk about Keyboard Shortcuts. You may notice a lot of different keyboard shortcuts here. But they don't work by themselves. For instance, Shift Command D pastes the date. But if I try to use Shift Command D here it doesn't work. You have to have the Menu chosen first. Then you can use Shift Command D. Now it may seem like that is not very useful except that in Settings you can setup a Global Keyboard Shortcut and set it to activate the Menu. So here I've setup Shift Command M. So now all I need to do is Shift Command M to activate the Menu and I can use the arrow keys to go down and return to select something. But a quick Shift Command D will actually paste the date because that's the keyboard shortcut here. 
Another big part of ClipTools is the ClipManager. So go down to here and this brings up this window. You can look at Clips, your Saved Clips, and your Smart Clips. This is a really easy way to look through them. You can remove some or save in Smart Clips. You can Add them. You can Reorder them. There are a variety of actions like Converting rich text to plain text right here. You can even go in and Edit them, like that, and you'll still find them here but with your changes. ClipManager also allows you for Smart Clips to set a keyboard shortcut for any Smart Clip., So since you can do almost anything in Smart Clips that you can do in the rest of ClipTools, like pasting a date in a certain format, you can setup all sorts of keyboard shortcuts to do all sorts of things without having to activate the menu first. But it is definitely useful to use your second Global Keyboard Shortcut here to bring up the ClipManager. I've got it set to Shift Command C so I can use Shift Command C to bring up the ClipManager. I can use the arrows to go through. I can use the fn or Globe Key and Return or an Enter Key if your keyboard has one, to select, paste, and close and easily find something in the Clip Manager and paste it in. 
There's a lot more functionality to the Clip Manager so you want to checkout all of the functionality here on the Help page about that. 
So there's ClipTools. It's not your typical Clipboard Manager. It has lots of odd and unusual functions so it is not for everybody. Keep in mind it is for Text Only. There are a lot of other clipboard managers out there that will handle images and other types of media. Whereas ClipTools focuses specifically on text and things you can do with text. Remember it is completely FREE. So it doesn't hurt to give it a try. Hope you find it useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 4 Responses to “A Brief Introduction To ClipTools”

Sheldon

1 month ago

Thanks bunches. As an early user...you have made my computer experience better with Cliptools

Ronnie

4 weeks ago

Ever since your release of Cliptools, I have never been able to use the application. I have removed the app and reinstalled it numerous times, including again this morning. I have reinstalled 1.5.2 today, and it still does not show in my control center nor in my menu bar (yes, I have space for such).
I am a longtime viewer of your videos and think you are a tremendous asset to the Mac user community. What would you suggest I do to be able to use this app? MacBook Pro; MacOS 15.2

Gary Rosenzweig

Ronnie: It is because you don't have space in the Menu Bar. Even if it looks like there should be space, there isn't. Keep removing things until it appears on the left. Also, make sure you aren't using a third-party app that limits what is in the Menu Bar. If you are, you'd need to go into that to allow now things to appear. See https://vimeo.com/791281569/69928ffdd0

Dennis V

3 weeks ago

This is the most useful tool I have found lately, thank you for developing it. My 2 biggest issues that this solved is a quick short cut to pasting the exact date and time 2025 01 04 - 08:06 PM which now is a keyboard short cut and pasting text into various apps without format. I didn't see a short cut for pasting without formatting but yours is way quicker than opening another program, pasting it in there, then pasting. Thanks.

A Brief Introduction To ClipTools

Comments: 4 Responses to “A Brief Introduction To ClipTools”

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