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CLCL - Clipboard Manager

Version: 2.1.5

Overview

CLCL is a powerful Windows clipboard manager with plugin support and customizable hotkeys.

It provides quick access to recent clipboard items via a customizable pop-up menu and supports extended clipboard formats including text, images, and files.

Features

Installation

Works on current Windows OS.

Download and launch setup_clcl_2_1_5.exe. The setup may issue a warning when started. This does not imply a threat, but is due to the fact that as a private developer I cannot afford to purchase a certificate to sign the binary for an Open Source project.

If you want to uninstall, do so from the Control Panel after closing CLCL.

Instead of the automatic installer you can also download CLCL_2_1_5.zip, unpack into a folder of your choice and start clcl.exe from there.

Data Storage

By default data and settings are stored in this folder (for Windows 10/11):

C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\CLCL

Portable Mode

To store data and settings in the same location as CLCL.exe, set clcl_app.ini as follows and then start CLCL.

[GENERAL]
portable=1

Language settings

The menus and dialogs are in English, Japanese, German, Simplified Chinese, or Ukrainian, according to your Windows language preferences. You can override this by explicitly setting the language on the Viewer tab in Options.
The selected language is stored in the [main] section of CLCL.ini.

[main]
...
language="en"

Usage

Basic Operation

Startup: When you start CLCL.exe, a clip icon appears in the task tray (the area with the clock in the corner of the taskbar).

Display Menu:

By default, the menu displays the history in descending order (newest first). The menu can be customized in the settings.

Viewer Window:

Tree structure:

┌─■ Clipboard - Current clipboard contents
│ ├─□ TEXT - Formats in the current clipboard
│ ├─□ LOCALE
│ └─□ OEM TEXT
│
├─■ History - Clipboard history
│ ├─□ (BITMAP) - History items
│ │ ├─□ BITMAP - Formats in history items
│ │ └─□ DIB
│ │
│ ├─□ Hello...
│ │ └─□ TEXT
│ │
│ ├─□ Today...
│ └─□ (BITMAP)
│
└─■ Templates - Template items
  │
  ├─■ Folder - Folder
  │ ├─□ Address...
  │ └─□ (BITMAP)
  │
  └─□ http://www... - Template item
    └─□ TEXT - Format in template item

If you move the mouse over a history or template item in the menu, a tooltip with detailed information will be displayed at the mouse position. If you select an item with the keyboard, a tooltip will be displayed under the menu item.

Right-clicking on a history or template item will display the registered tools in a menu, and the selected tool will be executed and sent to the clipboard.

To display the tool menu with the keyboard, press Ctrl and Enter and then select a tool.

The menu items displayed in the task tray or with hotkey are configured in the "Action" option. You can customize the menu behavior and how items are shown on the "Menu" tab of the options.

History

Newly copied data is added at the top of the history.

A single history item contains multiple clipboard formats. Use the "Format" option in Settings to register preferred formats and control priority when displaying items. The clipboard format with the highest priority is displayed in the menu and viewer.

The number of history items to keep is set in the "History" tab of CLCL Options.

The "Filter" option in Settings determines which formats are added to the history.

Templates

Save frequently used data such as standard phrases, text snippets, URLs as templates. You can add folders to organize them into hierarchical structures and give names to items.

To Add an Item:

  1. In Viewer, select the clipboard or an history item
  2. Right-click to get the context menu and choose "Add to Templates"
  3. Optionally choose a subfolder where to store the item.

To Add a Folder:

  1. Right-click in Viewer on Template or a subfolder thereof
  2. Choose "New folder" from the context menu

To Rename Items/Folders:

  1. Open Viewer
  2. Select the item
  3. Right-click and choose "Rename"

To assign a Hotkey for an Item:

  1. In Viewer right-click on a template item
  2. Choose "Set Hotkey ..." from the context menu

Clear Name erases the previous name and displays the item's contents as the name. If you name an item "-", it will be displayed as a separator in the menu. The format and data in the item will be ignored.

If you add & to the name, the character following it will be used as the shortcut key in the menu. If you want to display & itself in the menu, use &&.

Right-click on a template item to display the menu and select "Hotkey Settings" to assign a hotkey to the template item. Pressing that key sends the template item directly to the clipboard without displaying the menu, and pastes it directly if "Paste" is enabled. You can see the registered hotkeys in the list view of the viewer. If you select other template items, they will be displayed in the status bar.

There is no limit to the number of template items or the clipboard format.

Send to Clipboard

There are several ways to send history or template items to the clipboard.

Clipboard

What is the clipboard?

The clipboard is an area where different applications can exchange data. For example, when you copy text in Notepad and paste it in Word, both applications use the clipboard.

Clipboard formats:

The clipboard can hold multiple formats simultaneously. For example, if you copy text in Notepad, the following four formats will be stored in the clipboard (Windows 10/11):

・UNICODE TEXT
・LOCALE
・TEXT
・OEM TEXT

If you copy in Excel or Access, even more formats will be sent to the clipboard.

By default CLCL is configured to preserve:

Use the "Filter" option in Settings to customize which formats are to be saved.

Tools (plug-ins)

Tools let you process current selection, history or template data before pasting, or extend CLCL's functionality.

The installation package includes binaries of some useful plugins from https://nakka.com/soft/clcl/index_eng.html. These plugins have been reworked to fit current operating systems; especially the plugin DLLs are installed into the same folder as clcl.exe, the plugins' ini files to the same location as clcl.ini.

Configure tools in Options → Tool

tool_text

Text manipulation tools:

tool_utl

Utility tools:

tool_clip

tool_clip.dll is an additional plugin from https://github.com/wilfz/CLCL-tool_clip. Currently it contains the following features for clipboard items:

Options

History settings

On the History tab of the otions you can set how many items to keep, when to save the history, how to handle duplicates, etc.

If you increase the number of history items to keep to a value bigger than the default of 30, it is recommended to organize the menus with submenus. See here.

History and template items are shown according to the "Menu text display format" option. The displayed numbers start from 0, but if you want to change the starting value, set the starting number between the % and the character.

Examples:

%0d -> 0,1,2,3...
%8x -> 8,9,a,b...
%1n -> 1,2,3...8,9,0,1,2...
%10B -> K,L,M,N...

Action

Actions and menus associated with a hot key or a click on the task tray icon can be configured on the "Action" tab of the options.

Invoking method sets the method for invoking the specified action.

When you specify "Hotkey", set the key to invoke. "Ctrl + Ctrl", "Shift + Shift", and "Alt + Alt" invoke the specified action when you press the key twice.

If you specify Menu as the action, you can set "Paste". When you select an item in the menu, the paste action is automatically sent to the application you are working in. If you hold down Shift when selecting a menu item, it will not be pasted but will only be sent to the clipboard.

If you specify Menu as the action and Hotkey, Ctrl + Ctrl, Shift + Shift, or Alt + Alt as the invoking method, you can set "Show at caret position". "Show at caret position" displays the menu at the caret position of the editor. If you do not set it, the menu will be displayed at the mouse position.

If you specify Menu as the action and select History as the item, you can set the display range. The display range is specified from 1 to the number of items to be left in the history. Specifying 0 as the start number is the same as specifying 1, and specifying 0 as the end number is the same as specifying the number of items to be left in the history.

If the end number is smaller than the start number, nothing will be displayed. If the end number is larger than the number of items to be left in the history, only the number of items to be left in the history will be displayed.

Format

CLCL can process all clipboard formats, but clipboard formats that are not registered will be displayed as binary dumps in the viewer.

Clipboard formats are registered in the options "Format". The registered format at the top takes priority, and the clipboard format with the highest priority among the items is displayed in the menu and viewer.

To register, set the format name, the DLL to be processed, and the function header. If you omit the DLL and press the function header selection button, a list of built-in function headers will be displayed.

For example, if you want to process the CSV clipboard format as text when copying in Excel, set it as follows:

Format name: CSV
DLL:
Function header: text_

The menu and viewer will process it as text.

Filter

To select the clipboard format, set it in the "Filter" option.

If you select "Add all formats to history", all clipboard formats except those set to be excluded will be added to the history.

If you select "Exclude all formats from history", only clipboard formats set to be added will be added to the history.
For clipboard formats set to be added in the filter, you can further set the size limit when adding to the history. Data exceeding the limit size will not be added to the history.

If you set the clipboard format in the filter to "Do not save", it will not be saved to disk when CLCL is closed. For example, you can set it to add text and bitmaps to the history and save only the text.

Window settings

If you want to change the behavior of CLCL depending on the application you use, set the window and behavior in the "Window" option.

Specify the window title and class name, and use "*" as any character.
For example, for Notepad, set it as follows:

Title: * - Notepad
Class name: Notepad

The behavior of CLCL will change when Notepad is active.
Either the title or the class name needs to be entered, and if it is not entered, it is the same as specifying only "*".

Key settings for each window

Select the history or template item from the hotkey, and the paste action will automatically send the paste key to the window.
By default, Ctrl + V is sent to all windows, but depending on the window, the paste key may be a different key.

When the tool is called with a hotkey, the copy key (Ctrl + C) is sent to the window to perform the Copy -> Tool Processing -> Paste action.

The copy and paste keys for each window are set in the "Key" option. Set the title and class name of the window to be set and set the copy and paste keys.

If the copy and paste keys are not set, the default key settings will be used.

Multiple keys can be set for one window. If multiple keys are set, the keys will be sent in order from the top.

Tool configuration

When you select a tool DLL and function name, the tool name and call type are automatically set.

Drag and drop a plug-in DLL into the tool list window to display a list of tools that can be registered, and you can select multiple tools to register them all at once.

Command Line

When starting CLCL, you can specify a command line to specify the operation after startup.

If CLCL is already running, the command will be sent to the already running CLCL.

Format:

CLCL.exe [/vownx]
    /v Display viewer
    /w Monitor clipboard
    /n Cancel monitoring clipboard
    /x Exit

Helpful Hints

More history items and how to organize the popup menu

On the History tab of the options you can increase the maximium number of history items to keep, e.g. from 30 to 100. But without further configuration the popup menu will look rather crowded.

It's a good idea to organize your history items in submenus:

CLCL tray menu

To do so, switch to the Action tab, choose the Click on left system tray menu or the Alt-C hotkey menu and click on Edit.
A new window opens and there you select History/Ascending. Most controls are greyed out, but you can specify the Range of indication for instance to 0 to 19.

create submenu for history

OK. So now you have 100 items, but the menu would only show the first 19.
In the left half of the Edit of Action tab scroll down to the bottom and click on (New Content).
In the Content combo box choose "Pop-up Menu" and add "History 20 - 29" as title. Now move the new pop-up menu upwards (with the little triangle below the left half of the window) until it is just below History/Ascending.
Once again click on (New Content). This time choose "History/Ascending" from the combo box and set the range to 20 to 29. Move the new History/Ascending entry upwards until it is just below your newly created pop-up menu and a little indented to the right.
Continue so with as much pop-up menus as you like. You can even cascade the popups as shown in the screenshots.

Edit of Action

Credits

Update history

The author is not responsible for any problems caused by this program. It is strongly recommended that you back up important files.

2025 - 2026 MIT License. Sources and Releases under https://github.com/wilfz/CLCL

Copyright (C) 1996-2024 by Ohno Tomoaki. All rights reserved. https://www.nakka.com/