Our Verdict
Most Mac users cut , copy , and glue all the time . And most Mac users swear solely on OS X ’s build - in clipboard — despite its obvious limitations . Collective1.2 ( Mac App Store link ) aims to make the clipboard far more useful , and mostly deliver the goods . But it ’s hampered somewhat by the Mac App Store ’s sandboxing restrictions .
Collective runnel in the menubar , and it collects ( get it ? ) everything you simulate , in any app on your Mac — whether it be text edition , image , telecasting , audio , or something else . When you press Collective ’s keyboard shortcut , which defaults to Command - teddy - cinque but can be customized , a floating pallet appears in the centre of your screen , listing all the things you ’ve copied to your clipboard , on an app by app base . you could look for across your copied textual matter , or look specifically at content you ’ve copied within a specific app .
Then , you could expend your keyboard or the mouse to select depicted object you ’d wish to paste again . Once you ’ve arrowed to the subject matter you ’re after and murder Return , or after you tap it … nothing obvious happens . That ’s because the content you ’ve copied is now placed on your clipboard again , meaning as presently as you compress Command - V ( or choose Paste from the Edit card ) , your selected content is now pasted wherever you are . Without the Mac App Store sandboxing limitation , Collective could glue directly when you select the text edition or paradigm you ’re after ; since the app is sell through the Mac App Store , you instead ask to take the extra step of pasting manually .
You ca n’t resize Collective ’s windowpane , though you’re able to optionally prefer to pin it so it ’s always seeable . If the snippet of textbook or cropped version of an image is n’t enough , you could press the Spacebar to Quick Look the copied content in head . While you may exclude apps ( like watchword handler ) whose copy story you do n’t want saved , the app acquire a chip flummoxed if you employ a clipboard - strung-out school text expansion utility like TextExpander even if you turf out them ; Collective ’s clipboard history gets loaded up with entries from those background signal apps if you use them frequently .
That said , if you ’ve ever copied over something that you could n’t get back , you sympathize the importance of a clipboard history . And Collective makes for a hunky-dory and bare - to - economic consumption one .
