Jumpcut: Clipboard Buffering in your Menu Bar

Most likely, you’ve run into this problem in the last two hours. You’ve copied some text, pasted it into a document, copied some other text, pasted it, gone back to the first text block and copied it again. The problem with cutting/copying and pasting is its inability to multitask. Now I’m not one to clutter up your menu bar, but this free app is worth the real estate.

Jumpcut, a free minimalist clipboard buffering application, is a great way to keep track of your clipboard history. Once you start Jumpcut, it “listens” for your text clipboard entries and remembers them. These text clippings can be accessed through the menu:

or through the nicely named Sticky Bezel:

The menu interface is pretty straight forward. Just select the entry that you want to paste and Jumpcut will insert the text after your cursor. Using the Sticky Bezel is preferred if you know which entry number you’re going for. Just call up the sticky with your predetermined key stroke, cycle through the entries using your number keys, and hit enter to paste the text. You can adjust the number of entries that Jumpcut will remember as well as the number displayed in the menu bar through the preferences menu.

And that’s about it. Jumpcut is a simple app that does clipboard buffering extremely well. My only problem: Jumpcut only handles text. Granted, almost all of my clipboard usage is text entries. Plus, drag and drop could usually handle the special cases, but I have a habit of using my clipboard/keyboard for everything. The only alternative that may beat Jumpcut is Quicksilver, but I still use Jumpcut habitually.

Either way, Jumpcut necessarily expands the usability of your clipboard. It’s a free app, it’s easy to use, and you need something like this.

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