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Clipboards
Keyboard Maestro supports several different types of clipboards
- System Clipboard – the standard Mac OS X Clipboard used by all Mac apps
- The alternate name “Current Clipboard” is used in some Macro Actions
- Named Clipboards – Copy of System Clipboard, or other Named Clipboard, created by user for future use
- There is usually a default Named Clipboard named “Default Clipboard”, do not confuse this with the Mac’s System Clipboard.
- Past Clipboards – Prior Versions of the System Clipboard stored in the Keyboard Maestro Clipboard_History
System Clipboard
The System Clipboard is the clipboard that you will use and work with the most.
⚠️ Keep in mind that the System Clipboard is involved in all operations (Actions) that transfer data between the user interface (documents, menus, web pages,etc) and Keyboard Maestro.
For example, all of these Actions go through and will change the System Clipboard:
- and many others
Clipboard History
The Clipboard History keeps version history of the last two hundred times you have copied something to the System Clipboard. You can then paste any previous system clipboard by triggering the Clipboard History Switcher macro. This is a very powerful and useful feature.
If you enable the Save Clipboard History to Disk preference in the Keyboard Maestro General preferences, the clipboard history will be saved and restored when Keyboard Maestro Engine is quit and relaunched (such as when you restart or upgrade). Otherwise it will be reset each time you quit the Keyboard Maestro Engine.
To access the Clipboard History popup, press the default hotkey of ⌘⌃⇧V (or a hot key of your choosing).
The Clipboard History is a built-in Macro, which you can find in the Keyboard Maestro Editor, in the Switcher Group in the Macro Groups.
For more info, see Clipboard History Switcher documentation.
You can also use the Clipboard_History within the For Each action.
Named Clipboards
A Named Clipboard is not a true clipboard like the Mac’s System Clipboard. Rather it is simply a means to permanently store (like a file does) clipboard contents (like images or styled text) that can later be used to place on the System Clipboard.
Purpose
- Store a copy of another Clipboard (System or Named) that will persist, even across your Mac restarts, until you either change it or delete it.
- Make changes to a Named Clipboard using Actions like Apply_Style_to_Clipboard.
- Store styled text, images, etc that cannot be stored in a Keyboard Maestro Variable (which stores only plain text)
Example Use of Named Clipboards
- Storing styled text and/or images for future use, like a styled email signature or logos.
- Saving the current System Clipboard for future use
- To restore at end of your Macro.
- To use in other Macros.
⚠️ Note that Keyboard Maestro provides a named clipboard with the name of “Default Clipboard”. It is nothing special, and acts like any other named clipboard. The “Default” in the name means nothing more than that it was provided by default. Do not mistake this for the System Clipboard.
Clipboard Actions
There are a variety of actions for accessing or processing the clipboard. These allow you to build macros that operate on the clipboard.
Actions That Directly Use Clipboards
- System Clipboard
- Delete Current or Past Clipboard in the history of the System Clipboard
- All Clipboards
- Named Clipboards
For more info, see Clipboard Actions documentation.
Clipboard Tokens
In addition to the above Actions that use Clipboards, there are several Clipboard Tokens that can be used in any Action which has a field for Clipboards, Variables, or text.
These Include:
- %CurrentClipboard% (same as System Clipboard)
See Also
Actions
Forum
