I was recently introduced to Kippt, and I felt like I’d been missing out on something big. It’s similar to Evernote in that you can save notes and links and even annotate the links you’re saving, but there’s a bonus social aspect. Find Kippt users you admire or with similar interests and watch for all the neat stuff they’re clipping.
Klipps is a snazzy client that frees you from your browser and lets you do all of that cool Kippt stuff on your Mac. I’m going to try it out and see if it stands up to the official web app.
Kippt It Safe
If you haven’t already, you’ll need to sign up for Kippt. Users already joined up can log right into Klipps and start accessing saved notes. You’ll probably notice right away that the Klipps app looks a lot like the Kippt web interface. That’s certainly not a bad thing, since Kippt already looks pretty good, and if you’ve got a feel for the web app, you’ll be good to go in Klipps.
Snag some clips, and your inbox will look like this.
I’d never used Kippt before trying out the Klipps app, so I’ll run through some of the basic ins and outs that may feel super familiar if you’ve already been using Kippt to keep your notes, or clips, for a while. Along the left side you’ll see the buckets your clips are automatically sorted into. Unorganized clips get popped into the Inbox, but those can be sorted into lists. Clips from users you follow fall into the Feed, and you can mark your own clips or those of others to find later in your Favorites. All Clips is sort of an unsorted pile of all of the clips you’ve save to Kippt. Hover over the Lists to create a new one, but new Folders are only for premium users.
You may be asking yourself at this point what sets the Klipps app apart from the Kippt web app. I think it comes down to how nice Klipps makes the Kippt experience. Toggle the navigation sidebar on and off, and you can use the full Klipps window to browse your clips. While you can read or edit your clips in a full browser window in the web app, the sidebar is omnipresent. Without the sidebar, though, you can still navigate into different folders and lists. Click the folder or list name in the title bar to open a drop-down navigation menu.
Sort all of your clips into folders.
With a clip open, enter fullscreen to get an immersive reading and editing experience. This is a lot nicer than in the web experience, since even in fullscreen in the web app, you’ll still see your browser tabs or address bar. I ran into a problem with fullscreen, though, because if I was browsing clips in a list in fullscreen without the sidebar, I couldn’t navigate to another folder or list because I’d lost the title bar drop-down. While it may sound like a pretty specific set of circumstances, Klipps looks so good without the sidebar and in fullscreen, I kept ending up in the same conundrum.
Navigate in the sidebar or from the title bar.
Pros and Cons
I’m a big fan of web apps. If it makes sense to have something run in a browser instead of from my Applications folder, I’m all for it. That said, sometimes a Mac app complement is nice to have in my back pocket. I’m a bad one for closing browser tabs, so when it’s something I rely on like a notes or clipping app like Kippt, it’s nice to have a way to get to my clips without fear of constantly closing and having to reopen browser tabs.
What makes Klipps really great is that I can use the Kippt web app or the browser extension to clip stuff all day, from anywhere I’m signed into Kippt, and then I can sort through all of that stuff using the Klipps app. Because it’s a great standalone app, it’s nice way to come back to my clips later and move them around or add notes.
Klipps is a really great place to browse and edit your notes.
There’s a glaring omission in the Klipps app, though. So far it’s pretty good, but there’s not enough to make it a must to download. What it needs is offline editing. Klipps would be a hands down winner if I could organize my clips while I’m offline. There’s a great little markdown-compatible editor attached to Kippt, and that’s been carried over to Klipps. I’d love to have access to all of my clips when I’m offline, annotate them to my little heart’s content, and then sync them up with Kippt when I next go online. That’s just not how Klipps works, and it’s a bummer that such a great functionality, the kind of thing users of the similar Evernote app have come to expect, isn’t present here.
Final Thoughts
Klipps sure is a nice app to use. If you’ve been looking for a Mac client for Kippt, this is a great one to try. It works beautifully and provides an experience just as nice as what you’ve come to expect from the official Kippt web app.
There’s not a lot of added value here, though. What you’re getting is Kippt out of your browser and onto your Mac. The editing experience is nicer, but you can’t get to your clips offline. I definitely liked using Klipps and would recommend it to anyone looking for a way to use Kippt on their Mac, but whether Klipps is right for you depends on what you need from a Kippt client.
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