While some of these apps have really nice interfaces and are pretty to look at (dangling preposition), they just don't do everything I want or are too obtrusive. I don't want to feel like I'm working hard to use the clipboard. I want it to just be there, with me using mostly key commands to copy and paste. I have downloaded and tried out more clipboard apps then I can count, and the one that works best for me and does just about everything I want is Savvy Clipboard.
SavvyClipboard has one scrollable window with previews of all your clips, up to 100 [buzzz ... I'm wrong about this. Turns out you can enter any number of clips to save. I just saw the presets, and you can select one of those OR you can enter your own number.], which has been plenty for my use, and which can be set lower in preferences. The window can be as narrow as 214px or as wide as you want to stretch it. I usually leave it at the smallest, because it's enough to see the image previews and the first part of the text to know what I've copied.
To paste your items, you can drag them out, or you can click on an item and paste, or use the control key plus a number for the first 9 items and paste. Depending on how you copied an image, it will either drag out in it's original format or PDF. You can also right-click and save items in these formats: TIFF, JPG, PNG, BMP, RTD, RTFD, TXT.
As you copy, each new item goes on top and everything else moves down, unless you have locked an item by clicking in the lower left corner of the preview (a padlock appears). Locked items stay where they are, or you can reorder your items by dragging them up and down. I like to keep my locked items at the top. When I'm done with a locked item, I unlock it and it gradually moves on down the list.
You can paste your text items as plain text or rich text. You can set a default in preferences and then right-click to change it on a per-item basis. You can also right-click and edit your text items, even check spelling and grammar.
Unfortunately, editing items is the one area where SavvyClipboard falls short for me. It does not strip junk/carrots/forced returns text copied from emails. On the other hand, I haven't found any other clipboard apps that do that either, not without going through several extra steps, so I use SmartWrap for that.
Also, it would be nice if we could open every clipboard item, and not by right-clicking, but with a double-click [faster for me], for a default action. For example, double-clicking a copied URL would open it in a browser, email addresses would open a blank email, images would open in a predefined image editor, text items would open in a predefined text editor. If you want to do something different than the predefined action, THEN right-click or control click and make a selection. The developers have said they are actually working on adding this feature. One down, one to go.
I have read some complaints about the look of SavvyClipboard. I suppose it could be more polished, maybe some black and grey, some glassy looking stuff. I don't know, I'm mostly concerned with how it works, not how it looks, and with some of the clipboard apps hovering at around $30, SavvyClipboard is a steal at $12. You can even occasionally find it at MacZot for around $8.
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