Looking for free Windows Clipboard mangers? The Windows clipboard is probably the most under-recognized feature of the entire Windows family, yet it’s probably used the most often. In this post, I will give you my list of the 5 most useful clipboard manager tools that will help you increase productivity.
Best Free Clipboard Managers for Windows
1. Ditto
Ditto is an open source extension to the standard Windows Clipboard. You can store text, images, HTML, or any custom formatted content onto the clipboard. It has a simple and easy to use interface and a lot of cool features. For example, you can search previous copy entries and you can also keep multiple clipboards from multiple computers in sync with each other! And the data is encrypted when sent over the network. Even better! It also uses a database backend, so accessing and storing clipped content is super fast. Overall, it’s one of my favorites.
2. xNeat
This little program is really tiny! It weighs in at only 644KB! If you want something that will let you store more items in your clipboard and not eat up very much RAM, then xNeat is the clipboard manager for you. Of course, it’s not as fancy as Ditto, basically allowing you to bring up a menu with a list of all the items you have copied to the clipboard. You can setup hotkey also to make the copying and pasting very efficient.
3. Clipboard Manager
If you love using the Sidebar in Windows Vista and Windows 7, then you’re going to like clipboard manager. It’s actually a Windows Live Gallery gadget. Since it’s a gadget, it runs in the Windows Sidebar and lets you manage your clips from the sidebar itself, which is pretty neat. The copied items show up in a nice list that is also styled just like your sidebar.
4. Ten Clips
Another lightweight and easy to use clipboard manager is Ten Clips. Everything can be controlled by hotkeys, so you never have to use the mouse. If you work with any kind of data where you are always copying and pasting between programs, Ten Clips will make it much easier. It’s main standout feature is that you can quickly paste “purified” text, which means it removes all formatting and paste in uppercase or lowercase.
5. PasteCopy.NET
Though this program requires the .NET Framework to be installed, it works really well on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2003/2008. It also is the only clipboard manager in the list to support multiple languages. It has some cool features like auto convert of HTML to RTF or TXT and auto convert of RTF to TXT. What’s really cool, though, is that you can mouse over and see a preview of the actual clipped item. It also has an export and print function built in.
Are you using another clipboard manager that I didn’t mention here? If so, post in the comments! Enjoy!
Aseem Kishore is a blogger and Internet entrepreneur who blogs at Online-Tech-Tips.com about technology, software, and computers. You can also write a guest article on QOT and share your tips and tools.