ClipAngel is an open-source clipboard manager for Windows

A Clipboard manager can be a very useful tool, especially if you do a lot of writing and calculating work. It can store a history of the text that you copy using CTRL + C or a right-click and copy.

This can be very useful to have, in case you want to go revisit something that you copied to the clipboard, something that the default clipboard manager in Windows is incapable of.

We have reviewed plenty of clipboard managers here on Ghacks already, including Clipboard Master, Clipboard Help+Spell, or Clipjump which all add functionality to the built-in clipboard experience to make the function more useful.

ClipAngel is an open-source clipboard manager for Windows

It isn't by any means pretty, in fact not many clipboard managers are but you should never judge a program based on its interface. ClipAngel has a lot of features that make it worthwhile; the program sits in the system tray, and works in the background. When you need to access it, use Alt + V to bring up ClipAngel into view. This works in all applications, for e.g. Notepad, Libre Office, Firefox, basically any program.

The ClipAngel interface consists of a side-bar which lists all the content it has stored, a preview pane on the right where you can view the selected content, a menu bar with various settings and a toolbar with options to manage/edit the clipboard entries. There is another toolbar on the bottom with more options.

Pasting content using ClipAngel

Place the cursor where you want the text to be pasted into (for e.g. Notepad), and bring up ClipAngel's interface. Double click on the content that you wish to paste, and it will be added right where you wanted it to. Simple, isn't it? This works with text, rich text format, files, HTML and images.

Tip: Want to take several screenshots quickly and edit them later? Use the print screen key as many times as you want, and ClipAngel saves every one of them.

There are advanced options that you can use to paste content. To view them right-click on the selected content in the ClipAngel interface. This brings up a right-click context menu with options including Paste text, Paste line, Paste file, Paste Special, Simulate char input, Copy to clipboard, Edit title, Mark as favorite, Open file, Text compare and Delete. Most of these are self-explanatory, but Paste Special does have its own set of options.

This includes options for changing the case of the letters from: No Change, UPPER CASE, lower case, Sentence case, and a few CamelCase options. You can optionally set the program to replace tab with spaces, end of line symbol with space, etc.

Tip: If you typed a sentence in the wrong case format. For instance, IF YOU USED ALL CAPS. Don't delete or retype it. Copy it to the clipboard, and use ClipAngel to correct it to the desired case.

Advanced Options

There are a great many advanced options in ClipAngel. I'll mention a few of those. The paintbrush icon on the toolbar, can be used to display rich text formatting (bulleted lists, numbered lists, hyperlinks, etc). You can edit plain text directly from the program's interface. An optional secondary column can be enabled, to include the time-stamp of each clipboard entry. The toolbar and the List menu can be used for organizing your clipboard entries. The List menu lets you sort the list, display only texts, images or files, and more.

ClipAngel also includes the name of the program and the title of the document from which you copied the content from. You can edit it if you want to.

The Clip menu if where things get really advanced. You can use it to find text within all entries, which in itself is a priceless feature. The Save as option allows you to save a selected clip to file (HTML, TXT, PNG, RTF). You can select multiple clips and use the Join Clip option, to create a single combined clip. Similarly, you can select clips and compare the text in them, although this will require a third-party file comparison application like the ones mentioned here.

A few privacy related options

ClipAngel can be disabled from monitoring specific applications using the "Ignore applications" setting. You can use the "disable monitoring" and "clear clipboard" options in ClipAngel to stop it from storing clips and to delete clips respectively. Alternatively, you could simply exit the program, when you don't want it to store the clipboard's content, or just use the portable version and exit it when it's not required. You can export and import clips to the.CAC (ClipAngel Clip) format, like a backup and restore option.

Tip: To delete a clipboard entry, select it and hit the delete key.

The upload image option lets you save screenshots and other clips directly to the Imgur service. Personally, I don't like this option.

I should mention that ClipAngel requires .Net Framework 4.52 or above, to work. Though that really shouldn't be an issue if you're using Windows 10, as it is pre-installed in the OS.

On a personal note, I once lost an entire article to an incorrectly timed copy and paste. Another time this happened, was when a WordPress/Server error prevented an article from being saved, and I didn't have a draft copy. So, you could say I learned a lesson the hard way. That's actually the reason why I started using clipboard managers, along with Microsoft Office Online because of its auto-save feature.

Hours of work and effort could be saved, simply by using a clipboard manager. I've tried many over the years and prefer to use Ditto, though it hasn't been updated for a while. It's always nice to have an alternative though. CopyQ is also a very good clipboard manager, and Martin has written an excellent review about it.

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