The Evernote Clipboard

Pastebot was a terrific app for getting something from an iPhone to a Mac. Put some text or an image in Pastebot and it would be available on my Mac. But Pastebot appears to be abandoned and extremely dated. Even brand new replacements, like Command-C still require Bonjour for sharing data rather than syncing through a central server.

I toyed with other online clipboard managers like CloudApp and Droplr. They are great. The addition of web access to my clips was very convenient and the apps were also enjoyable. But after about 9 months, I started to feel like I had too many ways to capture and share a clip and neither service delivered everything I needed.

I’ve slowly found myself using Evernote more for this kind of clipboard syncing. It’s convenient and robust, if not instantaneous.

On the Mac, just use the Evernote clipper that comes with the application. I’ve configured mine to always add to a “clipboard” notebook as the default.

Screenshots are clipped using keyboard shortcuts that are easily configured by the user.

I prefer ⌘+ ⌥ + c followed by ⌘ ⏎ to save it. I also like the shortcut for sending the current OS X clipboard straight to Evernote.

The clipper works very well with images, displaying it in the menu bar applet before saving.

On iOS, it gets a little trickier. I’ve been using a very unattractive app called EverClip (previous review). This little gem will automatically upload the iOS clipboard to Evernote in the background. Again, I’ve configured it to upload to my “clipboard” notebook.

There’s also QuickEver Clip for iPhone that will automatically grab the current clipboard and upload it to Evernote.

But, the free Evernote app is pretty good for this workflow without much extra effort. Copy text or an image to the iOS pasteboard and then launch Evernote. Create a new note and paste. That’s it. Within a couple of seconds, everything should be in sync across iOS, Mac, Windows and the web.

I guess that’s what I find attractive about this option. The ubiquity of Evernote, good up time, fast syncing and cloud storage makes for a pretty great clipboard sharing service.