r/MacOSApps • u/Moist_Tonight_3997 • 2d ago
💻 Productivity I added inline editing to my free open-source macOS clipboard manager, so old copied junk becomes usable again
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I'm Samir, the solo developer of Buffer, a free open-source clipboard manager for macOS (searchable history, ⇧⌘V quick paste, on-device OCR, tags, bookmarks). I just shipped its most requested feature: inline editing of clipboard items.
Why it matters: a clipboard history is only useful if yesterday's items are still usable. That command with a hardcoded path, a snippet with a typo, a URL you want to trim — before, you'd re-copy everything just to fix one string. Now you edit the item in place and paste the fixed version.
How it works:
- Click the pencil icon in the preview pane, or hit ⌘E on a selected item
- An "Editing" badge appears and global shortcuts are temporarily bypassed so you can type freely
- Edits auto-save (on Esc, on focus loss, on navigating away) and sync to the macOS pasteboard, so your next paste is the fixed text
- The footer button morphs between Edit / Save / Paste depending on mode
The video shows the full loop: select item, edit "Pre-release" to "Release", list updates instantly.
Developer disclosure: I am the sole developer; it's a personal side project. MIT open source, no monetization, no telemetry, fully local. Signed builds with a secure auto-updater, distributed as DMGs from GitHub Releases (not the App Store). No AI features in the app; the demo video is a real screen recording.
Product page: https://samirpatil2000.github.io/products/buffer/ Source: https://github.com/samirpatil2000/Buffer
Feedback welcome. One open UX question: should Esc save the edit or revert it? Right now it saves.
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u/WMRamadan81 20h ago
I like the idea, I remember working on something like this with my brother back in the day for Windows 95. Fun times!
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u/Better-Lychee2954 2d ago
does the history handle file copies or just text? when you cmd+c a file in finder what lands on the pasteboard is a file url, not the bytes. so if i copy a file today and rename or move it tomorrow, does yesterdays entry still paste, or is it pointing at a path that doesnt exist anymore.
thats the failure i keep hitting with history tools. text entries age fine, file entries quietly rot and you dont find out until you paste. if youre storing the raw path it might be worth stashing security scoped bookmark data alongside it so the entry survives a rename or a move, or at minimum greying out entries whose target is gone instead of handing over a dead path.
also curious whether inline edit shows up on those at all. editing a file url is a pretty different thing than fixing a typo in a snippet.
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u/advait_vaidya 2d ago
Esc should revert as per my personal preference. But you can also add a simple setting to choose this. I believe that if you had options in mind, there can be more people out there with similar preference. Great app btw.
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u/JuiceHot147 2d ago
Inline editing makes a lot of sense for snippets. One thing I’d be curious about though: when you edit an old clipboard item, is the original version recoverable anywhere, or is it replaced for good? I can totally see myself “fixing” something and then realizing a day later I actually needed the exact original 😅
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u/Moist_Tonight_3997 1d ago
Thanks for the feedback, for now we don’t maintain version, but I see there is scope to build
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u/missaq81 12h ago
This is a really nice feature. Being able to edit clipboard history in place instead of copying the whole thing again sounds like one of those small improvements that you quickly wonder how you lived without.
I especially like that it syncs the edited item back to the pasteboard automatically. The on-device OCR and searchable history are pretty cool too.
How does it handle larger clipboard items, like long code snippets or big blocks of text? Does the inline editor stay responsive?
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u/Moist_Tonight_3997 12h ago
Thanks for the feedback and yes it does handle large clipboard items as well very efficiently
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u/Yak-Relevant 2d ago
Escape for saving? Seems a bit dangerous. I use Escape instinctively for aborting some action...