CopyQ is an advanced Clipboard Manager

CopyQ is a cross-platform open-source clipboard manager for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X that is easy to use and quite powerful thanks to the advanced features that it offers.

Clipboard managers extend the functionality of the built-in clipboard function of the operating system. The clipboard on Windows is limited to a single entry which means that it erases the previously stored entry whenever a new one os copied.

Most clipboard managers remember multiple copied items and many offer additional functionality besides that.

CopyQ review

Windows users can run CopyQ as a portable program that does not require installation. The program stores anything that you copy to the Clipboard in its interface when you run it. Anything meaning plain and formatted text, HTML code, images, URLs and any plain text type of data.

You can access the data at any time and run operations such as edit, delete or preview on copied items. A built-in search is available with a tap on the F3-key on the keyboard to search the data set.

While you can use CopyQ this way exclusively, you may also use the program's support for tabs to separate clipboard items. Tabs are useful as you may use them for separation, for example, different work or school projects, or research topics. Since CopyQ saves the data across sessions, you may even use CopyQ for activities such as bookmarking that it is not designed for in first place.

CopyQ includes an editor

Preferences

CopyQ remembers 200 entries in history by default. You may change the number in the preferences.

The program ships with a large set of options and settings. Some change the design and layout of the program, others its behavior and functionality.

Here is just a short list of preferences:

• Add a tab tree and hide various items.
• Disable the tray icon (so that you use it with shortcuts solely).
• Disable program notifications.
• Change the display format of specific items, e.g., images, text or notes.
• Change program shortcuts.
• Change colors and fonts.

You may notice that some keyboard shortcuts may interfere with program shortcuts.

Advanced clipboard operations

CopyQ supports advanced features such as sort options for clipboard entries, ignore rules for certain programs, password protection, advanced command line and scripting functions, or an option to sync tab items with files in a directory. A good starting point for these is the official program documentation.

The command line options that it provides are quite handy. Run copy q add "text1" "text2" to add text to the clipboard, copyq read 0 to print the content of the first item, or copyq --help to display the available command line arguments.

CopyQ supports exports and imports of the history. While that is not a full sync feature, it still gives you options to sync your clipboard data across devices or create a backup of the data for safekeeping.

Closing Words

CopyQ is a powerful clipboard manager that works well out of the box. Users who dig deeper get even more functionality and while some of it may seem overkill to most users, it certainly is useful to some. (via gHacks)

Now You: Do you use a clipboard manager?