AutoClips Configuration
AutoClips window
You can open the autoclips window from the Preferences window. Double click on the autoclips file.
The AutoClips window displays a list of the currently saved clips. You can select one and click "Copy to Pasteboard" to restore it to the Pasteboard.
You can change how much history is kept by changing the Remember field.
You can set how much history is shown in each dock or status bar menu with Display in Menu. Note that if you set the Display in Menu number to be say 10, and the Remember history to be say 20, then each application specific or workspace specific menu could include up to 10, but a different selection from within that 20. So its a good idea to have the Remember history larger than the Display in Menu size.
Clip Fields
- Label: You can give a clip a human readable label which will then be displayed in the menu. This is most useful for clippings that contain images or are otherwise not self-explanatory, and it is most useful for static Clipboard stores which we will examine shortly.
- Space: The workspace (aka "Spaces") number in which the application from which it was copied resides.
- Type: The designation of the type of clipping within the Pasteboard.
- App: The name of the application from which the clipping came.
Clipping Stores
Most users will only need the default clipping store. However it is possible to add new stores each with their own hotkey. If you add a new Store, leave the Listen to Pasteboard button unchecked. If this button is unchecked, the contents of the Store will not be updated by the application, but you can set up the clippings manually. Then you can use a different hotkey to paste commonly used clippings into other applications. It will generally only make sense to have one Store which listens to the Pasteboard.
How to create a clipping store
- Click the plus ["+"] button in the list of Stores. Give it a name like say "Greek Letters".
- Add some clippings in the Clippings tab. Let's say we add αλφα, βετα, γαμμα).
- If we don't understand Greek letters, we could use the Label field to give them the labels alpha, beta and gamma, so that we can understand them in the menu.
- Optionally add a hotkey by clicking on the hotkey field.
- You can now paste a greek letter into your document either with the hotkey or from the menu.
Clear All Options
You have the option to clear the contents of any Stores that listen to the pasteboard automatically when either the screen sleeps (OS-X 10.6 only), when the machine sleeps, or when the program quits. This is useful if you are in the habit of putting sensitive information in the Pasteboard, they will be cleared out when you leave the computer. The "On Quit" option clears the pasteboard also when you attempt a machine shutdown (even if the shutdown is ultimately aborted).
Settings
- Run when Automaton starts: Whether this autoclips file will be listening to hotkeys and the pasteboard when Automaton starts. Corresponds to the Run checkbox in Preferences.
- Is running now: Whether this configuration is active right now. Note that the active status will revert to the value in Run when Automaton starts when you close the autoclips window, so this setting is only temporary.
- Sticky popup window: Normally the popup window only stays on screen while you hold down the hotkey. If you check this the window stays until you either press Enter to select, or escape to cancel.
- Clippings wraparound to beginning: Changes whether the list of clippings will cycle around in the popup window, or stop at the end.
- Menu Selection Pastes: If checked, then selecting a clipping from the menu puts it in the Pasteboard and tries to paste it into the current application with a simulated Command-V. If unchecked it simply puts the clipping into the pasteboard, but doesn't try to paste it. It will be in the pasteboard however for the user to paste if they wish.
- Limit clip size: This will limit the size of objects that will be stored in your history. It it highly recommended that you have some kind of limit, because if you should one day copy something to the Pasteboard of enormous size, it could wreak havoc with your system and memory consumption. Note that when Mac programs put something on the clipboard, they do it in various formats, and AutoClips saves them all and restores them all to give the most authentic simulation of the original paste. This could mean say a gif or png put on the pasteboard, might actually be also available as tiff and various other formats, and it isn't unusual for the size of an image when in the pasteboard to blow out by up to 10x the size. If you are not much interested in having images in the pasteboard, you can save a lot of memory by reducing this number to a smaller value. A notice is printed to the log when a clip is ignored because of its size.
- Popup transparency: Changes how transparent the popup window is.