iClip — “Who Art Thou?”
iClip, what is it? Simply put, it’s a smart clipboard history tool; that’s its basic function, but it also serves as a scrapbook of sorts which you can use to store frequently used pieces of… but I get ahead of myself. First, the clipboard feature:
Clipboard — “Multiplied by Infinity”
The most fundamental element of iClip is its clipboard functionality. We all know how the normal system clipboard works, you copy something; you paste it; you copy something else; it overwrites the clipboard contents; you paste it. It’s been working like a champ for years and years, but what if you want to reuse the clip that you copied previously? No go, you have to go back and copy it again! Or, say you have a whole bunch of things that need copying from one application to another; with the traditional method you’d be bouncing back and forth between apps like there was no tomorrow.
iClip brings you sanity in your whirlwind world of copy and paste. Observe:
The Basics — “Skimming the Surface”
You will see to the left, a screenshot of iClip’s interface (click it for the full-sized image). Normally iClip is hiding off the edge of your screen—any edge you choose—and doesn’t annoy you with it’s presence unless you swish your mouse over the edge it resides in, or activate it with the optional menu bar item or configurable keyboard shortcut. When activating it with your mouse it will stay there until your mouse leaves, and will hide itself again; if you use the menu bar item or keyboard shortcut, it will stay until you tell it to leave, so you don’t have to keep diving for it with your mouse every time you want to glance at it when using it heavily.
Those little round things are the bins. As you can see, iClip can handle more than just text. In the top bin there’s plain text; the next two contain images; number four contains a web link; while five and six are holding TextMate and Blender files (or, rather, aliases to them).
When a bin contains a web link you can double-click it to open the link in your default browser. This also works for file aliases, which will open in their default application when double-clicked (e.g. Blender files will open in Blender).
Text can be added to an empty bin at any time by clicking it; you will be presented with a text box into which you may enter whatever you wish.
The +/- buttons at the bottom are for adding and removing bins; if the number of bins exceeds the capacity of your screen, a scrollbar appears on the side. Nice.
More Power — “Scraps of Information”
You can view the contents of a bin by clicking on it (see the fourth screenshot in the section Configure It to see the different behaviors available). In the three screenshots to the right you can see how this looks for text, images, and hyperlinks.
The contents of each bin are editable, just Control + Left-click (or simply Right-click, if you have a two button mouse) and select “Edit clip text…” The wording will be different for the various clip types, but you get the idea. You will then be presented with a window that lets you muck about with the text or hyperlink. Also available is the option to edit the clip name (or give it one).
What’s a Mac application without drag-and-drop, right? iClip allows you to drag anything you wish, both to and from the application. You can even drag the contents of one bin over to another, causing them to switch.
Now we get to that ’scrapbook’ feature I mentioned at the beginning. This is actually one of my favorite features. You may have noticed this thing at the top of iClip:
This innocuous little tool packs a huge wallop. It is iClip’s “clip set” feature. The clip set “Recorder” is the default set that receives all input from the copy command; when you copy something, this is where it goes. But we’re more interested in creating our own clip sets, so let’s look at how to do that.
At the top of iClip you’ll see a little gear icon, click this. Down will drop the Edit menu, select “New clip set…” from the list; you will be prompted for a name and the initial “bin count” (how many bins are in the set), which, of course, you can change at any time in the future with the +/- buttons. That wasn’t so hard now, was it? You can even set a keyboard shortcut for creating sets if you like.
To access your clip sets, click the name of the current clip set and a drop-down list of all the sets appears. The “Recorder” clip set will always be at the top.
User made clip sets behave a little differently from the “Recorder” set. Even if you have one of your own clip sets selected, when you copy something it’s going to go into the “Recorder” set. To get an entry into your custom set, you can either click on an empty bin and paste or type text directly, or you can do drag-and-drop.
Feel the Power — “That’s Nice, but what’s it for?”
So what good is having custom clip sets going to do me? Well, the whole point is to keep regularly used text, links, and files readily available. For instance, I’m a blogger and there are bits of HTML and Javascript that I use regularly. I’m also a programmer, I keep frequently used bits of code a flick of the wrist away. I run a web server, I keep my server’s IPs and various terminal commands in another set. I post on forums, I keep signatures and bits of code where I can find them.
A more advanced use I have for iClip is storing templates. I will have pieces of code, a newsletter, or something that I want to use over and over, but some piece of it is always going to be different every time I use it—the date, for instance. What I’ll do is replace that element with something like “—INSERT DATE—” so that I can find it easily with a text editor’s “Find and Replace” feature. Now all I need to do is use iClip to paste it into whatever application I’m using, do “Find and Replace” on the “—INSERT DATE—” and whatever others need replacing, and I’m done. Very powerful; saves me a ton of time each day.
Clip sets also have some temporary applications as well; you can create a clip set for a specific project and then delete it when you’re done. Good for when you’re working on a project and keep using bits of text, or have several pictures you want to use but don’t want them in the way yet.
A quick note about the “Recorder” set: Keep in mind that your history is only going to be as long as the number of bins you have in the “Recorder” set. If you copy thirty items and you only have ten bins in your recorder, you can’t get back to bin number thirty (or even number eleven for that matter); so if you want to keep a longer history, be sure to add more bins to the “Recorder” set.
Configure It — “Bend it to Your Will”
I won’t go into the preferences for iClip much. Suffice it to say that you can alter the way it looks and behaves, set keyboard shortcuts and all that good stuff. Check out the screenshots below for more:
Beauty — “Form as well as Function”
One cannot write a review of iClip 4 without taking note of its glorious graphics. They put a lot of attention into the graphics; absolutely beautiful.
Quite frankly, this is one of the biggest things that sold me on this application; not to cast a shadow on it’s functionality (in fact, I was using iClip back in version 3.x when it was still “ugly”) but the graphics on this app just blow me away.
Makes me think of what Steve Job’s said about OS X, “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”
iClip lite — “Dashboard Champ”
iClip lite—the “Best Mac OS X Dashboard Widget 2006 Winner” (impressive credentials)—while not as powerful as it’s big brother, still inherits his good looks.
Unlike the full application, the widget isn’t always recording the clipboard input, it has a switch to toggle recording on and off. You can read more about it at Inventive’s iClip lite page.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s FREE! Go download it right now and give it a spin.
To be entirely honest, I don’t have much use for the widget form (partly because I don’t use Dashboard as much as some people might). I prefer the full application; not only does it have more features, but I like it’s location on the side of my screen.
MacZot — “Blog iClip to Freedom”
Today MacZot is running a reviewZOT offer, if they get 290 reviews they will give iClip 4 away for free from their website (for a limited time, of course; so jump on it quick if they do).
I was planning on blogging about iClip sometime anyhow, this just brought it to the top of my list. And since I already own iClip 4 my main interest is that it will become available to my friends, family, and fellow Mac lovers. So get bloggin’ folks, and register your blog entry at MacZot so that it will count towards the offer.
Even if you miss this chance you should still download the iClip demo and give it a try.
Gripes — “Nothing is Perfect”
There’s always something that can be improved in an application. I won’t try to come up with a bunch of them, but here’s my main annoyance with iClip:
It doesn’t scroll smoothly. What puzzles me about this even more is that iClip lite does scroll smoothly, while the full application does not. Not a big complaint, but everything else in iClip is so well done that this kind of grates; and it makes it confusing sometimes to know in which direction, or how far, you are scrolling.
I Close With Thoughts — “Shoot Me for a Poet”
I bid thee all farewell, But with this parting thought,
If thee tryest not thou iClip, My post will be for naught.
(*cough cough* Kindly ignore that 
)
Seriously though, taking iClip 4 as a whole, it’s obviously not perfect (what application is?) but it does just what I need it to do, and it looks downright gorgeous while it’s doing it, what more can I ask?
I would bring up the topic of other applications that deliver the same functionality as iClip, but this review is plenty long enough as it is. Let me just say that I by no means turn up my nose at such applications as Butler and Quicksilver (in fact, I use both of them constantly, every single day; I couldn’t even begin to count how many times I’ve called them both up just in the amount of time it’s taken me to write this post). As it stands now, iClip is my main multi-clipboard application, with Butler and Quicksilver providing awesome backup and supplemental features.
All in all, iClip 4 is a great application that fits well into the look and feel of the Mac, and it has served me well. I am pleased, and highly recommend it to anyone.
[ Visit the iClip 4 webpage ]
