When you think informer, you think Huggy Bear, now don't you?

If, like me, you do a lot of typing to produce content or code on your computer, then the clipboard is your friend. We all know how useful it can be to take a phrase that you’re going to be using often (especially long, difficult-to-spell phrases) and just drop it into your document or form with ease. But your clipboard can help you a lot more than that and you can probably add useful features for free!

The main thing you’ll probably want in this type of program is some sort of copy history. The great limitation of the standard clipboards on Mac and Windows is the ability to hold only one item. If your clipboard could remember, oh, say, the last ten items you copied, it would be easy to store several chunks of text that you’ll be using over and over. Plus, no copying over an important piece of data by accident. Several programs can also handle images and other data as well. Many offer additional features that make them even more useful. Here are some ways to get started.

On my Mac, my clipboard manager is ClipMenu. This free program adds a memory for up to ten copied objects and can be accessed by a simple icon on my menu bar. It also has the ability to store several chunks of text that you use frequently as “Snippets.” You can group these by topics and give them convenient titles so you can remember them. I’ve only been using it about two weeks but it does exactly what it’s supposed to do, with no conflicts with other system resources. Some other popular free programs include Jumpcut and Clyppan. Also, no mention of clipboard managers on the Mac would be complete without mentioning CopyPaste — this grandaddy of Mac cliupboard managers will set you back $30, but it boasts a wide array of features that may benefit power users.

I haven’t explored the clipboard manager offerings for Windows but, during my research, I did encounter an article at organization and productivity website LifeHacker that listed several free Windows options — CLCL, ArsClip and Ditto. ClipMate is pay software, at $34.95, but offers a much larger set of features.