Since the days of OS 4 I’ve been skeptical of utilities that provide multiple clipboards, as many of them hack the operating system, and I’ve been repeatedly stung by them. I gave up years ago, but still come across reports of bad karma caused by some such utilities, while scanning the Apple and other user forums.
Christian has provided the Snippets feature in XMenu 1.9 that allows one to build a ‘library’ of plain and rich text files (and Internet locations) that can be inserted into a text document. It does not hack the OS, which means it won’t create problems.
Here’s how to use it:
Launch XMenu 1.9. You can, if you wish, add it to the list of startup items in System Preferences > Accounts - Login Items.
Command-click on an XMenu item in the menu bar to access Preferences. Check the option to display a Snippets icon in the menu bar.
To create a snippet, select text in any application. Command-click (or Control-click) on the Snippets icon in the menu bar and choose ‘Open Folder in Finder’. Drag the selected text into the Finder folder that opens. Alternatively, you can copy in the Finder plain or rich text files or Internet locations into the Snippets folder.
The result is a ‘library’ of snippets than can be selected for insertion into documents. Items no longer needed can be deleted by displaying the Snippets folder in the Finder and sending them to the Trash.
The snippet library can contain hierarchically organized folders, e.g., by topic. Snippets can be edited by a text editor such as TextEdit.
To select a snippet for insertion into a text document, click on the Snippet icon in the menu bar and choose the desired one. It will be inserted at the cursor insertion position in the (frontmost) text document – in whatever application you are using.
Anyone who needs to use and reuse standard text collections should find this feature very useful. Citations, FAQs, support responses, that sort of thing.
It’s free!