I plan to improve BTT's clipboard manager quite a bit in the near future.
In 4.937 I have started with a few first small improvements:
dragging items out of the clipboard manager should now behave much better
in "compact mode" (with the right side collapsed) you can now press space to show a preview of the item in a popover (in non-compact mode space opens quicklook if a file is selected)
BTT now by default adds a conditional activation group for the clipboard manager that enables the use of shortcuts to access the first 9 elements via shortcuts (cmd 1-9 is the default)
added a "move to top" button for each item
when selecting multiple items and then pasting all of them via enter or double-click, they will paste in the order they were selected in
the action bar is now shown on the bottom of the preview window, items in there can be reordered by dragging or hidden by right-click
a sophisticated "Snippet" feature, allowing to tag items and group them.
open at various locations e.g. "Open on mouse position."
better search with more options (fuzzy, tags etc.)
optional OCR for every copied image
add support for opening the clipboard manager with a specific search/filtering via the predefined action "show clipboard manager"
some sort of queue (please post ideas)
Features added since this post was created:
for copied files the "open with" button now shows a list of apps that can open the file
fixes some issues with the "edit image" action (by the way, this is my most used action in the BTT clipboard manager for quickly annotating screenshots)
the uti selection now adds "file.contents" for copied files. Makes it easy to quickly view the contents of a copied file.
button bar moved to the bottom and has now reorderable and hidable items
duplication prevention active by default
files ( and any other items) can be dragged in and out of the clipboard manager
reorder items in the clipboard manager by dragging and dropping or by pressing the new "move to top" button
allow to access specific paste board types (while defaulting to the auto preview mode)
Automatically adds a conditional activation group that allows to use cmd + 1- 9 to paste the numbered items. If you want this to work even if the clipboard manager is not active you need to change the variable the CAG is based on from BTTClipboardManagerActive to BTTClipboardManagerOpen
I have added an additional variable for cags in 4.939 BTTClipboardManagerOpen - this one will also be true if the window is only visible but not active. I have however not yet tested it.
You would need to change it in the automatic CAG that has been created (just change from Active to Open). The individual shortcuts don't need the condition.
What we need to do is quite simple: we just need to integrate the functions of Maccy or Paste.
However, the software that should really be integrated is Magic Mouse. Without this software, the scroll wheel on the mouse does not function on a Mac, and other scroll wheel fix software can conflict with BBT. I'm not sure if anyone has reported this issue before.
Do not store duplicate entries, especially if copy is executed multiple times in sequence.
Unfortunately this is more complicated than it sounds as BTT does not really look into the content before you open it. There might be very slight differences in copied content that can be hard to detect. I could add it for very obvious cases though (e.g. if the md5 of the complete content matches).
Possibility to edit the entries. Something like in Raycast - edit screenshot in respective app, edit string within BTT for example.
This is already one of the most important features and has always been possible
Different search/find options, like fuzzy, strict etc
Definitely coming soon!
Find text on screenshots.
Good idea, however will increase cpu usage as BTT would need to load and OCR every image. Currently OCR is only done when an image is viewed.
Open on mouse position.
Definitely coming soon!
Close/hide on click outside
This is already possible, can be activated in the settings
I thought that it could be achieved like that, but I was not able to do it. What should be conditions for the CAG ?
Edit entries:
Maybe I have not explained it well - I would like to edit a screenshot which is taken from Shottr with Shottr. About the text edit I've expected some shortcut to trigger the edit (which could be nice/useful), but it is simply as clicking on the preview.
Close/hide on click outside:
I've overlooked that one, but maybe because it was grayed out for me, since "Close Clipboard Manager before pasting" was enabled.
I would like to offer you a truly useful idea: for OCR, you should directly use the system's preview or screenshot software to leverage Apple's built-in OCR capabilities, rather than relying on other processing power. Apple's native OCR is both fast and accurate, but it does require an internet connection.
I would be interested to know how you imagine the Snippet Manager. Will it be connected to the Clipboard Manager so that clipboards can be moved? Will we be able to see both in windows next to each other?
I imagine it like your notes example. There will be a (hideable) sidebar to the left that shows your snippets / folders. You can move any clipboard item into any snippet folder. Users who don't want to use snippets can completely hide the sidebar, then everything would be like it is right now.
Haha, not long ago I set up some local open-source AI models, but they run very slowly. I also tried using online audio and video transcription AI models, but my current Mac can't handle them at all. We need more affordable APIs. Essentially, all Apple users have paid for Apple's OCR API.
Thanks for all of the improvements here! I'm looking forward to what's to come as well.
Is it still possible to configure it to appear along the side?
There are several items I use frequently, and now only some are shown by default. I see I can make more items visible by making the window wider, but that ends up just taking a lot of horizontal space that isn't otherwise used.
Actually, I've never been quite happy with them on the side either, but I've never thought of a better solution. But now I'm realizing that on the side, I could see more items without losing as much useful screen real-estate.
