The Magic Of Apple’s iCloud Sync

My Mac is home to an ever growing number of applications which store files in iCloud which then syncs them up nice and tidy with other Macs, iPhone, and iPad. We’re all familiar with how that works. Calendar, Contacts, Bookmarks, and more, sync and play nice-nice with iCloud.

As a service, iCloud has become sufficiently dependable that I keep my photos from Photos in the cloud (with the master photos on my Mac and backed up elsewhere; this isn’t my first picnic). For Mac users interested in keeping items that have been copied to the Mac’s clipboard, here’s the best solution money can buy.

Copy. Save. Sync.

The Mac’s clipboard is one of those odd technology creatures which hasn’t evolved much through the ages. Copy an items from which ever app you want, and it gets placed into the clipboard so you can paste it somewhere else later, even into a different application. That’s all well and good but if you copy something else again, what was copied before disappears forever. Until you find it and copy it again.

Copied is a Mac, iPhone, and iPad clipboard manager which captures whatever you copy or cut on your Mac and saves it into a library of up to 1,000 items and favorites (easy access to items which you use often). Then, Copied syncs those captured clipboards to iCloud and makes them available to other Macs, iPhone, or iPad.

Is it magic? No, but it might feel like it if all you’ve done for years is copy and paste and then copy the same item over again just so it can be pasted somewhere else later. Copied eliminates all that extra effort, and thanks to iCloud makes it sync to other Apple devices.

• Copy – Save a copy of your clipboard. Copied supports text, links and images (JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF).
• Drag-and-Drop – Drag-and-drop one or multiple clippings into any app.
• Edit – Make changes or merge multiple clippings together.
• Lists – Store and organize your clippings.
• Search – Simply start typing to find a clipping.
• Template – Copy clippings formatted with our built-in templates or create your own.
• iCloud Sync – Access clippings and lists on all your OS X and iOS* devices.
• Clipboard Sync – Seamlessly copy on one device and paste in another.
• Per-Application Rules – Whitelist or blacklist clipboard content copied from specific apps.
• Hotkeys – User-configurable shortcuts allow you to quickly activate the app or perform actions without activating the app.
• Scriptable – Control Copied from another app using scripts.

Not shabby, huh?

Copied is one of my favorite Mac clipboard managers but despite the pretty marketing speak, I have a few issues.

Copied also provides continuity between your devices. With iCloud Sync and Clipboard Sync, you can pick up right where you left off on any device. Copied uses iCloud Sync to sync your saved clippings and lists so that you can access them from any device. Clipboard Sync works in the background to automatically update your clipboard whenever you copy or save clippings from another device.

All of that is true so where’s the problem?

iCloud does not sync as quickly or as accurately as Dropbox and Dropbox is not an option for Copied. Where’s the magic, Apple?

Maybe it has something to do with Apple’s customer base, likely an order of magnitude higher than Dropbox, and though iCloud works, there are times when it works an hour or two or more to sync up photos from the Photos app. I depend more and more on iCloud to sync files between devices. So far, so good, but I appreciate some applications which give me the choice of where to sync, whether iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, or others.

Choice is good.