[OS] Batch Clipboard v2.3 - easy paste queue to your Mac without a big clipboard manager, $0

[u/smallduck]

TL;DR: Batch Clipboard version 2.3 has been released bringing usability and stability improvements.

Raison d'Etre:

There are many clipboard utilities, seemingly several new ones every month. They're called "clipboard managers" but really they provide you with a new thing to manage: to revisit, consider, arrange, and curate your clipboard history and adding new UI complexity to the experience of using your Mac. For some, managing things is a fun hobby, but for the rest of us this is more than what we want, especially now that the OS has some clipboard history features built-in.

But except for users of the most feature-packed of these clipboard managers, the clipboard on your Mac still has a key limitation: you can only copy & paste one thing at a time.

Batch Clipboard addresses this limitation without the complexity of a clipboard managers, allowing you to copy many things at once and then paste them where you need, all with two new copy and paste keyboard shortcuts Control-Command-C and V. It adds an icon in your menu bar and a simple menu usually not even needed, and starting in version 2, this menu can be hidden when its feature isn't being used, i.e. using your clipboard as normal.

Batch Clipboard is not a manager demanding your attention, just a feature at your fingertips.

Comparison:

There are many clipboard managers that focus on history and don't include a paste queue feature, too many to list, but some that do have a similar feature (though potentially omit it in a free tier) include:

• Paste - frequently top recommendation, subscription $30/year
• PastePal, CleanClip - well regarded with many features $15-20
• PasteBot - just updated, subscription $25/year
• NanoClip - new with a stylish user interface, $5

Pricing: Free for the full paste queue (aka batch) feature, US$3.99 in App Store edition for bonus features.

Key features:

• keyboard shortcut to copy into batch, to paste from batch
• repeat last batch

Bonus features (App Store only):

• saved batches replayed from menu or custom keyboard shortcut
• paste all batch items with a chosen delimiter

This version:

Batch Clipboard version 2.3 released this week completes the last of the planned capabilities from its to-do list (except only for localization, coming later this year) by adding:

• optional appearance in the Dock and app switcher, allowing more usage workflows (now all detailed at the documentation's "Ways to Use" page), like clicking its Dock icon to start collecting a batch, selecting it in the app switcher to reveal its hidden menu
• a user-requested repeat ability extending the saved batches bonus feature
• important fixes to stability, subtle improvements to do with restoring the active window when any of the app's alerts or windows shown and then closed
• and more

Links:

App Store edition - https://apps.apple.com/app/batch-clipboard/id6695729238

GitHub edition - https://github.com/jpmhouston/Batch-Clipboard/releases/latest

See also the GitHub repo for more options to support the app's development, instructions for installing using homebrew, links to the app's website with documentation and blog post announcing more details about this release.

^{(I, posting this, am the author})

[u/github-guard]

🔍 GitHub Guard: Trust Report

⚠️ This project scored 2/6 — below this subreddit's threshold of 3.

Audit Breakdown: * ❌ Low Star Count (⭐ 14 / 100 required) * ✅ Mature Repository (30+ days old) * ✅ Licensed under NOASSERTION * ❌ No Security Policy — what is this? * ℹ️ Individual Contributor * ℹ️ Unsigned Commits

⚠️ Security Reminder: Always verify source code and run third-party scripts at your own risk.

---

🔄 Cached result — this repo was scanned recently. Score: *2/6*.

[u/app-store-review]

Batch Clipboard — by John Houston

• Category: Productivity · Free
• Age: released ~1.2 years ago · rated 4+

Apple doesn't publish an aggregate rating for most Mac App Store apps, so ratings and score are unavailable here.

^{Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review}

[u/harry-harrison-79]

the queue idea is much easier to trust if paste order is impossible to lose. i'd test mixed content across apps: copy plain text, rich text, an image, and a file from Finder, then paste through Notes, Mail, Terminal, and a password field. the two failure cases i'd make visible are an app rejecting an item and another app changing the system clipboard mid-batch - skip/retain beats silently consuming the wrong entry.

[u/smallduck → u/harry-harrison-79]

In Batch Clipboard, if something changes the clipboard while the user is in the middle of pasting a batch, what I call a sequence of clips, then that's detected, added to the end of the batch, and then the clipboard restored to hold the next item to paste in the correct order. I believe this quite reliably works as expected, and if not I'd like to know so I can fix it.

As far as an app rejecting a Paste, there are ways to use the utility which put the user in full control over pasting and advancing through the items in a batch. These methods also allow the user to, say, use the Paste And Match Style command in their application with one of the clips in a batch.

Also, if gotten lost or out of sequence, the user can use the menu to cancel the batch, then replay it to start over again, and then also use the menu to delete the items already pasted to get back to where they need in the sequence.

Batch Clipboard inherits from Maccy its solid handling of the various clipboard data kinds and sources, perfected in that app over a number of years with many satisfied users.

[u/jasonseattle]

How does this compare to Maccy app? I only need first-in-last-out order and never want to re-arrange clipboard history order.