Looking for clipboard app that saves all clips forever and has search

Question

Is there an application (open source or commercial) that will save whatever I copy to the clipboard in a permanent store and then enable me to search items based on keywords. A simple implementation could be it dumps each item in a directory in a file. The file name could be based on the timestamp of when the copy happened.Image search might be harder. But at least for text the search should be straightforward.How hard would it be to write such an application? Basically you just need a way to dump each clip event to trigger generating a timestamp, and then saving it to a (configurable) location.Why this application should exist. This would save me and many other people working in our times so much time. Instead of looking for things I saw a few days I could always search through my infinite clipboard.I see some clipboard apps. What they lack is easy searchability.If something like this exists please share.

asimjalis · Accepted Answer

My concern with many of the recommended clipboard solutions is that they include search and archival as an afterthought. For example, by default they will let you store clips for a few days, weeks, or months. Instead of storing them forever. They also don&rsquo;t put a lot of thought into search. For example, search by regex, search by phrase, search by date range, combine these search predicates by and/or. It would be nice to have this functionality for text. Image search could use OCR to search images by words in them. The possibilities are endless when clipping becomes permanent archival instead of a mechanism for moving things from one window to another. This is a paradigm shift, I think. It is another category of application when you are archiving.If there is anyone here who wants to build this I would be glad to help brainstorm.

slovette · Answer

I use &lsquo;Paste&rsquo; on my Mac and I LOVE it. Search, easy hot key to a reference window, unlimited history that syncs to iCloud, paste as plain text and I can exclude certain things like my password manager.$15 /year

Mustan · Answer

For windows, Ditto's worked pretty well for me.https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io/

majkinetor · Answer

You can use copyq with very large limit. Not sure how it will behave with "infinite" data.Otherwise, it totally fits your description.

blakbelt78 · Answer

Alfred for Mac has a clipboard that works really well. I&rsquo;ve been using it for years.

4wQcKBHM · Answer

I use 'Copied' on Mac OSX

Looking for clipboard app that saves all clips forever and has search

I use ‘Paste’ on my Mac and I LOVE it. Search, easy hot key to a reference window, unlimited history that syncs to iCloud, paste as plain text and I can exclude certain things like my password manager.
$15 /year

For windows, Ditto's worked pretty well for me.
https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io/

You can use copyq with very large limit. Not sure how it will behave with "infinite" data.
Otherwise, it totally fits your description.

Alfred for Mac has a clipboard that works really well. I’ve been using it for years.

I use 'Copied' on Mac OSX