Keeping open multiple application windows, even multiple browser tabs, can eat up a lot of memory and slow your machine down. But when you’re busy, it’s difficult to sacrifice the ease of having every application and website you need one click away for that extra speed boost.
Click.to makes that trade off a little easier by gathering all of those applications into a single menu interface. By allowing you to access everything in one place, it’s no longer necessary to keep a tab for every web app and a window for every application going at the same time. But how much functionality can Click.to really provide in a single popup menu? We’ll take a look!
Making the Satellite Work for You
Click.to is a popup window, called a satellite menu, that appears whenever you perform certain actions. To get the satellite menu to show up you can either copy just about anything or you can hover over the area of your desktop where the hidden satellite menu lives. Once visible you can interact with all of Click.to’s services, and there are a lot.
The Click.to satellite menu
When you start Click.to for the first time, you’ll be prompted to choose the services, or applications, you want in your satellite menu. Not to worry, though; anything you leave out goes into a flyout menu hidden beneath the bottom button in the satellite. That way if there’s a service you want to keep close at hand but don’t use everyday, you can still have it nearby. You have a lot of service applications to choose from, too, including the obvious social media favorites, Google’s main services, Microsoft Office, some mail apps, and plenty of others.
Click.to starts working when you copy text or a file. Depending on what you copy, your satellite menu will pop out at you and offer the relevant services. If you copy text, just about all of the services are going to be offered, but the field will be narrowed if you copy an image or a PDF.
Click.to autohides, but you don’t just have to copy something to the clipboard to get it back. Hovering over its hidden position will also cause it to appear. Click on any of your services, and start typing. When you’re ready to post your text or perform your search, depending on the service application you chose, click the post or search button in the bottom of the window, and you’re off to the races! It’s worth noting that if Click.to needs to get into a browser to perform whatever action you’ve requested, it uses your default browser and won’t try to force its way into Safari.
All of the extra Click.to services
If you’re posting to Twitter, Facebook, or any other web app that needs a login, you’re going to have to grant Click.to access the first time you take it out for a spin. Be careful of creating emails or anything else that has multiple fields with Click.to, as well; your subject lines will default to “clickto,” likely not what you’re going for and slightly less helpful than a default “(no subject).”
Making Click.to What You Want it to Be
If you realize you’ve made a horrible mistake and want to take everything back, you can change the default services that appear in your satellite menu in your preferences. There really are a lot of service applications to chose from, far too many to list here, but if it turns out there’s something you need that they don’t provide, you can add it. There’s even a little tutorial on the Click.to app website to walk you through it.
Changing the default services in the satellite menu
The appearances tab in the preferences lets you choose where you want the satellite to spend its time or if you even want it to appear automatically at all. If you fill up on services, you can resize the icons down, and you can create a keyboard shortcut to make the satellite menu appear without hovering.
Moving the menu around the desktop, and a few other options
I’m copying things 60,000-70,000 times a day, and while that’s clearly an exaggeration, with the Click.to satellite menu sliding out every time I tapped Command+C, it sure felt like I was doing that much copying and pasting. Luckily the “show satellite icons on desktop” toggle in the appearance preferences took care of that for me. The satellite menu was still waiting on my desktop if I hovered my mouse in the right spot, but it stopped jumping out at me from behind potted plants just to see my hilarious spit takes. That preference isn’t labeled “this will stop the satellite from showing up every time you copy something,” though, and it really should be. This was almost a dealbreaker for me.
Conclusion
Click.to is a great app for getting shortcuts to your most used applications, be they of the web or Mac variety, right on your desktop. It’s almost endlessly customizable, and where the possibilities for customization end, your own ingenuity picks up. If the service you need isn’t offered, just add it, and Click.to will hold your hand while you do.
Click.to brings all of your services into a single interface. It’s simple, it’s easy, and if you’ve wanted a faster way to post to specific applications, especially if you’ve wanted to post to web apps when you weren’t inside your browser, this is definitely one to try. Without interrupting your workflow, Click.to gives you likety-split access to just about everything you need.