Clipboard Manager Adds "Clipboard -1" as New Item When the Latest Item Is Deleted by Another App

Bug Reports
1

I use both the clipboard manager in BTT and the clipboard manager in Keyboard Maestro.

Let's say, we have the items in the clipboard:

Clipboard 0 (latest item)
Clipboard -1 (2nd to the latest)
Clipboard -2 (3rd to the latest)
...

When I use Keyboard Maestro to delete the latest item in the clipboard, BTT detects the original 2nd to the latest item as a new item being copied and adds that to the clipboard.

The result becomes:

Clipboard -1(the original 2nd to the latest)
Clipboard 0 (the original latest item, because KM cannot delete this item in the BTT clipboard)
Clipboard -1 (the original 2nd to the latest)
Clipboard -2 (the original 3rd to the latest)

As I keep asking KM to delete the latest items in it's clipboard, BTT keeps adding the updated latest items in the KM clipboard to the BTT clipboard. So it becomes:

Clipboard -2 (the original 3rd to the latest)
Clipboard -1(the original 2nd to the latest)
Clipboard 0 (the original latest item, because KM cannot delete this item in the BTT clipboard)
Clipboard -1 (the original 2nd to the latest)
Clipboard -2 (the original 3rd to the latest)

And so on...

Is there a way for BTT to know that a third-party app was deleting the items from the clipboard and not add new items to the clipboard?

2

Unfortunately both apps keep their own separate clipboard history, thus this is not possible.
The system only keeps the most current item in the clip board.

3

Hi @Andreas_Hegenberg,
Thanks for your quick response.
But when I delete the items from the clipboard in BTT, both KM and Pasta (another clipboard manager I'm using) do not add the original 2nd latest items to their clipboard. So I thought their might be a way for BTT to behave similarly.

4

Ah I think I misunderstood.

Basically the same item should not be added again?
Maybe I can make this an option, I need to look into that.

5

This is not entirely the same issue I was describing. What you said applies to "Copying the same item multiple times". What I said was: BTT should be able to recognize when a third-party app was removing the latest item from the clipboard, not adding a new item to the clipboard. In this case, BTT should just do nothing. But if you can make BTT not having duplicated items in the clipboard, it would be even better!

Also, is it possible to make the BTT clipboard scriptable? I did not see anything in the Script Library about the clipboard.

Thanks for considering this issue!

6

There is not really a "removing" from system clipboard. The system always has one item in the clipboard and it can be replaced by some other item (which might be empty).

BTT can not access the database of the other app's clipboard managers, thus it won't know if something has changed in their database. That's why I thought maybe Pasta was solving this by disallowing duplicates (which has also some disadvantages, which is why I personally wouldn't like that but it could be added as an option)

7

That's a very helpful explanation. Thanks!

Now I can fully understand what you meant.

Please seriously consider adding this option. I don't you don't have to search the entire clipboard history for duplicates. To reduce the time need for comparison, you can allow users to set the number of items to compare, e.g., do not allow duplicates among the latest 50 (or 100 or whatever number users set) items in the clipboard history.

Or, you can allow users to set a time, e.g., do not allow duplicates in the last 12hours (or 24 hours, or 36 hours, etc.) of clipboard history.

Of course, you can design in whichever way you think is better and more convenient.