Best Free Clipboard Replacement Utility

There are many clipboard managers out there but only a few that do what I want, the way I want.

Clipx and Clipomatic are excellent. They are both fast, lightweight, easy to use and use few system resources. Press a programmable hot key to launch a pop-up menu of clips to select. The clip selection can be made via mouse or keyboard shortcut. They have options to record and display a variable number of clips, and to store permanent clips such as text snippets. Both use less than 1MB memory so you can have them running continuously.
Clipomatic is a bit slicker to use and has more robust permanent item functionality, but its real limitation is that it is text only. ClipX will do everything Clipomatic will (A plug-in to enable the permanent clip function is available from the same site as ClipX plus copy images.)

The only reason I've stopped using those two is because they only keep a limited number of clips. They can hold 30+, but everything is displayed on the hot key popup and it gets pretty big and cluttered. If you keep the popup slim and small, you only get to keep a limited clip history.

There are other clip utilities that record full histories but most of them fail in simplicity of use. Clip Magic and Yankee Clipper III are two decent ones that record, sort, and archive huge histories and both do it well. But they are overkill; more like clipboard Personal Information Managers than utilities. And the cost of this overkill is the loss of simplicity of operation. Yankee Clipper is now shareware but the last free version is available from the link below.

ArsClip offers a perfect balance between functionality and ease of use. It has the fast and light features of Clipomatic and ClipX, but also records a long history of clips. The popup only displays a limited number of clips but the rest of the history is just one click further away. The history is also searchable. ArsClip has permanent items, and lets you create several different groups of permanent clips (like forum responses, email addresses, signatures, etc.), each displayed as separate cascading menus on the popup. It also allows easy one-click editing of clips, requires no installation and can be run from a portable drive so you can easily tote all your clips with you.

For those with undemanding clip management needs, ClipX and Clipomatic are both fine choices. They are efficient tiny utilities that, while simple, still enormously increase the functionality of the Windows clipboard. Clip Magic and YCIII are more like full-blown clip management applications rather than utilities, but do offer excellent sorting and archiving. ArsClip is my favorite, offering speed and effortless functionality while preserving a wealth of data.

All of these tools offer great advantages over the standard Windows Clipboard. So pick what's right for your needs knowing that whatever you chose you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

ClipX
Website: http://bluemars.org/clipx/
Download Link:: Latest stable version: ClipX 1.0.3.8 (Nov. 30th, 2005)
Latest beta version: ClipX 1.0.3.9 beta 3 (Feb. 6th, 2008)
Author: Francis Gastellu
Current Version: 1.0.3.8
Version Date: November 30, 2005
License: Freeware
Download File Size: 108KB
Operating Systems Supported: Not Clear – presumably through Vista
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: None
Other relevant information: None

ArsClip
Website: http://www.joejoesoft.com/cms/showpage.php?cid=97
Download Link: http://www.joejoesoft.com
Latest stable version: 3.0.3
Author: arsware.org
Current Version: 3.0.3
Version Date: June 12, 2007
License: Freeware
Download File Size: 613KB
Operating Systems Supported: At least through '98 S.E.
Additional Software Required:
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: No
Non-English languages supported: None
Other relevant information: Runs from executable

This software category is maintained by volunteer editor Oers Kelemen.