Clippy Review
By Meghan McDonough | February 4, 2011
Easy to access clipboard; Intuitive drop-down menu; Can choose between 20 and 100 clips
Stops copying after reaching maximum number of clips
The annoying Office companion is back, but this time he's useful.
"Looks like you're writing a letter..."
Anyone who used Microsoft Office in the late 90s or early 2000s is all too familiar with the over-eager paperclip who wanted to hijack your documents and format them to his liking. The paperclip icon has returned for Mac, but in a much less intrusive form. Clippy, available in the Mac App Store for $0.99, is like the quiet, cool, and collected cousin of the original Office tyrant. All Clippy does is collect up to 100 items on the clipboard for easy access and reuse.
Like every other app downloaded from the Mac App Store, Clippy immediately puts itself in the dock, although you'll only access it there to launch it. Otherwise, Clippy resides in the top bar on the desktop, silently collecting everything you copy, including photos. When it's time to copy anything beyond your most recent clipping, click on Clippy and a menu drops down with all your clips. Click on the clip you wish to paste, and a checkmark appears next to it, making it the active clip. Paste it where you want it--and that's it.
Clippy allows you to set the number of clippings that will appear in the drop-down menu. The de-fault is 20 clippings, but we recommend changing it to the maximum of 100. Clippy's only major flaw is that once you reach the maximum number of clips, the app stops collecting them. It doesn't toss out the oldest clips; it just stops collecting new ones until you quit and restart the app. We hope that the developers will address this issue in a future update, but we've never copied more than 100 clips in a single day. Note that quitting the app or shutting down your computer clears the clipboard cache.
Clippy is one of the most useful apps we've found in the Mac App Store. Unlike its Office cousin, it's unobtrusive and works seamlessly.
Software Type
Required Processor
Software Required OS:
Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard
Required RAM
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clippy/id406361964?mt=12