Corkboard is the future of copy and pasting on Macs. It provides a simple and elegant way to manage all the data you put in your clipboard. You can drag photos, text, links and more to the application’s menu bar, and it will be securely stored until you need to use it.
This review will give you an in depth look at one of the most powerful clipboard managers available for the Mac. Read on to find out just how amazing this $10 application is, and how it can change the way you copy and paste!
The Corkboard
Overview
If you consider yourself a Mac “power-user”, then you probably use Command-C and Command-V dozens, if not hundreds, of times daily. But sometimes copy and paste just isn’t enough for what you. Say you’re working on a project that requires you to cut, copy and paste a bunch of text, links, pictures or code into the document you’re working on.
You’re probably switching between all your open windows and applications and copying bits and pieces into a different application. Don’t you wish there was a nice and easy way to copy and paste all that information, and then keep it in a safe place until it’s ready to be used?
Well, you’re in luck. That’s exactly why Ayluro made this fine piece of software called Corkboard. It’s essentially a virtual clipboard for you Mac where you can store — or “pin” — images, text, links and much more.
The Desktop Drop-board!
Using Corkboard
Using Corkboard is almost too easy. When you launch the application you will see a little pin icon in your menu bar. Here, you can display Corkboard, change preferences, or quit the application.
In the Menu Bar
First, let’s open up the preferences. There are a few settings you can change, such as the hot key to display Corkboard, and whether you want to start the application automatically at login. If you have a slow or older Mac, you can choose to disable the animations as well as turning off the complex corkboard-looking background, both of which use a few extra CPU cycles.
Corkboard Preferences
Once you have Corkboard set up as you’d like, you can begin using it. There are a couple of different ways to add items to Corkboard. You can either drag an image, some text, or a link to the menu bar or dock icon, or you can copy some data into your clipboard, press the hotkey and then paste the item into Corkboard.
Once your item is added, you can move it around and place it where you want. When you’re ready to use it, you can either double click on it or click on it and press Command-C to copy it to your clipboard. Then, just copy into a document or window to use.
You can also choose to “lock” a clipping, so it will stay in the same place. And don’t worry. Once an item is in Corkboard, it will remain there until you remove it. It will even stay in Corkboard if you quit the application or if your computer crashes.
Clipping Options
Corkboard works with all kinds of files, including colors, vCards, URLs, text, HTML code and files. Whatever you need to store, you can be sure that it works with Corkboard
Plugins
Time Machine for Your Clipboard
Everyone’s had the problem: you copy something important, and the you accidentally copy something else, removing the previous item from your clipboard. Corkboard fixes this unfortunate problem.
Corkboard keeps a record of everything you copy to your clipboard. If you make the mistake of copying over something important, you can still retrieve it. Just open Corkboard and you’ll see a clipboard with a list of all the items you copied.
You can scroll through pages for items even further back in time, and once you find what you were looking for, just double click it to bring it back into your clipboard.
Your Clipboard History
Using Corkboard is a breeze. Like I stated earlier, to open Clipboard, you can either click on the menu bar icon, drag an item to the dock or menu bar icon or press a keyboard shortcut.
Ayluro has also added support for VoiceOver, so you can fully control the app just by speaking. You can hear the content of a certain clipping read out to you, and navigate the app using just your voice if you’d like to.
Conclusion
At only $9.99, Corkboard is a steal. There’s also a free trial version that limits you to keeping only four items in your Corkboard at any one time.
Corkboard is definitely one of my favorite applications. It’s always open on my Mac, and it’s set to launch on login. It’s very simple to use and understand, and I love the framework and APIs that the developer added to the app. The overall design and performance of the app is great.
As far as suggestions go, I’d love to be able to resize clippings so I can make room for more images and files. And I wouldn’t mind being able to hide certain clippings. Other than that, the application is amazing. I’d rate it 9/10 and I highly recommend this for any Mac user.