How to speed up clipboard with CopyQ

When you copy a piece of text or an image on your computer, the content is saved to the clipboard. From there, you can paste it in another location. However, if you want to store lots of text for reuse or want more control over how it's done, you'll have to use a third-party app called the clipboard manager. And CopyQ is one of the best of its kind.

With CopyQ, you can copy multiple clips to the extended clipboard and edit them to update their content or tag them for organizing! Let's see how to do that to modernize your existing clipboard - simple and with few features -.

Install CopyQ

CopyQ is available on Windows, OS X and Linux. Download and install CopyQ like any other application available in the executable file format.

On Linux, find CopyQ in your distribution's software center by searching for 'copyq'.

If you like Terminal and are using a Debian-compatible distribution like Ubuntu, you can have CopyQ with:

sudo apt install copyq

If you are using Arch, install it with the following command:

sudo pacman -S copyq

However, it's worth mentioning that it's also available as Flatpak if you're a fan of the format. On systems that support Flatpak, you can install CopyQ with:

flatpak install flathub com.github.hluk.copyq

Once installed, you can run it from the app menu or by using:

flatpak run com.github.hluk.copyq

Clipboard management with CopyQ

Once installed, find CopyQ in the Applications menu and run it. You should see the application's icon (a scissors) appear in the system tray. Click it to access the clipboard contents listed at the top of the menu.

CopyQ allows you to have multiple entries in your keyboard, which you can select from this pop-up window. Just click on any entry at the top of the menu to replace the existing clipboard content with it. Then paste it anywhere as you would with the default clipboard having only one entry.

Configuration and shortcut

Start off by accessing its Preferences , accessible from the same pop-up menu. Let's take a look at some options worth tweaking.

Start by choosing the History option group from the menu on the left side of the window. There, expand the number of clipboard entries that CopyQ can hold by increasing the number next to 'Maximum number of items in history' . Initially, it is set at 200 entries, but you can use any number you want. CopyQ can even sort thousands of entries.

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Next, move to the Tray group and increase the 'Number of items in tray menu' from the initial value of 5 to at least double. This way, you get quick access to the last 10 things copied to the clipboard.

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To avoid having to move your mouse into the system tray whenever you want to use CopyQ, choose the Shortcuts option group . In the Global shortcuts tab , add shortcuts to the 'Show / hide main window' entry . Then, whenever you press this shortcut, the CopyQ main window will appear.

From there, you can manage CopyQ's extended clipboard content or select and paste an entry. The post has assigned the Win + C keyboard shortcut , which is close enough to the default shortcut to copy something to the clipboard ( Ctrl + C ) and is therefore easy to remember.

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Advanced clipboard management

Use the keyboard shortcut you specified in the previous step to make the CopyQ main window appear.

You can view everything you've copied to the clipboard in this window and use your mouse wheel or keyboard cursor keys to scroll up and down the list. To move the contents of an item back to the clipboard, click it or press Enter on your keyboard. To delete any unwanted entries, highlight them and press Delete on your keyboard or right-click on them and select that option from the menu that appears.

What's even better, though, is that you can edit any of the entries directly in CopyQ. By right-clicking on an entry and selecting Edit or highlighting the entry and pressing F2 on the keyboard, a minimal text editor will appear, allowing you to edit the copied text as desired. Then, click the first icon in the toolbar to save any changes to the entry.

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Since CopyQ can store thousands of entries, it can be difficult to find a particular item after a while. To fix that, you can use tags to categorize them. Right click on the entry, select 'Add a Tag' , then enter the tag in the small window that appears.

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Tags are helpful, but if CopyQ's list contains hundreds of entries, you'd better turn to its powerful search function to locate a particular text string. You can choose Find from the Edit drop-down menu or press Ctrl + G on your keyboard.

Enter what you want to find in the search field and CopyQ will locate and highlight the text string in the entries.

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Besides, there are many other interesting features in CopyQ that you can freely explore.

Marvin Fry

Update 13 November 2020