Ethervane Echo, A Portable Windows Clipboard Extender

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 28, 2011
Updated • Jan 5, 2012
Software, Windows, Windows software
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Ethervane Echo is a little clipboard extender for the Windows operating system that keeps track of your clipboard history for you. The program is relatively straightforward to use. The clipboard manager keeps track of the history automatically once unpacked and started. You can click on the application icon in the system tray to bring it to the front, or keep the window open on the desktop all the time for fast access to your clipboard history.

Ethervane Echo sorts clipboard entries into tabs for easier access, unlike other clipboard extenders who simply provide an unsorted list of entries.

The all clips tab lists all clipboard items, whereas tabs like last hour, urls or browsers only specific items that you may be interested in. A search is provided for heavy clipboard users to aid them in finding the clipboard entries that they are looking for.

Clips are automatically sorted by date, with options to change the sorting order to alphabetical, application, use count, length or ID.

windows clipboard extender

The right-click menu offers to copy, paste and delete clips, and editing options.

All information are stored in a database in the program folder. The program creates the database automatically on first run. You can easily copy the database to another computer to use it there as well, or run the clipboard manager from an external drive to access the clipboard history wherever you go.

The database is cleaned up ever 30 days by default, with options to change the frequency of the cleanup in the program preferences. It is even possible to keep the database in memory all the time and not on the computer's hard drive.

Keyboard shortcuts are available for most operations. From deleting entries (del) over pasting only textual information (shift-enter) to minimizing the program window (esc), bringing it up front (windows insert) and clearing the clipboard (ctrl i).

The feature set does not end here though. Ethervane Echo can be configured to only accept clipboard entries from specified applications, which can be useful for the workflow or to avoid leaking information into the manager that you do not want to record.

Other features include pasting multiple clipboard entries at the same time into the active application window, adding manual entries to the clipboard database, integrating a spell checker or changing the program's font and color layout settings.

Ethervane Echo will only capture text, no images or other data that you copy to the clipboard. This appears to be the only limitation.

The application is an excellent replacement for the standard Windows clipboard functionality. The program is a contribution to this year's NANY challenge at the Donation Coder website.

The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

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Comments

  1. Panks said on February 24, 2021 at 1:55 am
    Reply

    the links to the software download no longer work :(

  2. B. Moore said on December 28, 2011 at 10:33 pm
    Reply

    How does this compare to Clipboard Help+Spell besides Ethervane being portable and CH+S can handle more than just text?

  3. smaragdus said on December 28, 2011 at 10:26 pm
    Reply

    A very interesting and promising application (still in Beta phase of development), thank you for the discovery and the review, Martin.

    I am still testing it and my first impressions are great. There are so many nice and free clipboard managers that it is not easy to choose one. The fact that Ethervane Echo captures text only does not decrease its value for me since I need clipboard extenders for text capturing only.

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