Pasta For Mac

When you think about it, the clipboard is incredibly limited in its abilities. Yes, it was intended to be as simple as possible in order to be accessible to all types of users, but it would be great if the OS at least offered the option to extend the clipboard's capabilities.

The cleverly named Pasta was designed as a third-party clipboard-enhancing solution. It's far from the first of its kind, but, unlike most competitors, it takes a visual approach to display your clippings. One glance is enough to find what you need, and copying it is just as simple.

Just like any other clipboard manager, Paste saves what you have copied and allows you to access it again later. While some of these apps stick to just text, Paste truly remembers everything you've sent to the clipboard, including files.

To access something, simply click the app's menu bar icon or use the ⌥⌘V hotkey. From the main window, you can see the most recent items and filter them based on app and type, as well as search for something specific.

The user interface is the main reason we would recommend Pasta in favor of other apps. Each clipping is shown in a sort of thumbnail, which indicates the type of content included.

Images and text can be viewed directly, links are highlighted, color codes are displayed using the respective color as a background, etc. To top it off, the app comes with its own version of Quick Look that allows you to preview items by pressing Space.

If you have a Macbook Pro, the app offers support for the Touch Bar, making it much easier to access your clippings on a laptop.

When copying passwords, they are normally obfuscated and only saved to the disk in encrypted form. This feature should be compatible with 1Password, but we couldn't get it to work with LastPass.

Overall, Pasta is definitely one of the best clipboard managers available. It offers an impressive, though not outstanding set of features, and its user interface is the most impressive we have seen from an app of its kind.