CLCL (pronounced "clickle") is a powerful clipboard caching utility for Windows.

• Universal Clipboard Support - Supports all clipboard formats
• Template Registration - Register frequently used text and templates
• Customizable Menu - Fully customize the pop-up menu shown with hotkeys
• Auto-Paste - Automatically paste selected items from history or registered items to active editors
• Image Thumbnails - Display image thumbnails in menus
• Tooltips - Show detailed tooltips in menus
• Format Filtering - Configure which formats to save to history and which to persist
• Window Configuration - Set ignored windows and custom paste keys per window
• Persistent History - History is automatically saved on exit and restored on startup
• Unlimited History Size - No limit on number of history items (configurable)
• Explorer Viewer - Browse and edit history and registered items in an explorer-style viewer
• Plugin Support - Extend functionality with plugins
• Unicode Support - Full Unicode support
• Freeware - Completely free to use

Requires Windows XP or later.

1. Download and extract the CLCL files to install
2. To uninstall, simply remove the files from the Control Panel
3. Make sure CLCL is closed when uninstalling

Data is saved to the following folder (Windows 10):

C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\CLCL

To save data in the same location as CLCL.exe, create or edit clcl_app.ini with:

[GENERAL]
portable=1

Then launch CLCL.

When you launch CLCL, a clipboard icon appears in the system tray (notification area). Click this icon to display the menu showing your clipboard history.

By default, the menu displays history items in reverse chronological order (newest first). The menu can be fully customized in the settings.

Right-click the tray icon to open the Viewer window. The Viewer has two panes:

• Left pane: Tree view of history and registered items
• Right pane: Content display and editor for selected items

You can edit the content in the right pane, and changes will be reflected in the item when focus moves. Some formats cannot be edited. The current clipboard contents can be edited.

The tree view structure:

├─ Clipboard          (Current clipboard contents)
│  ├─ TEXT           (Formats in current clipboard)
│  ├─ LOCALE
│  └─ OEM TEXT
│
├─ History            (Clipboard history)
│  ├─ (BITMAP)       (History item)
│  │  ├─ BITMAP      (Formats in this item)
│  │  └─ DIB
│  ├─ Sample text...
│  └─ ...
│
└─ Registered Items   (User-registered templates)
   ├─ Folder         (Folder)
   │  ├─ Address...
   │  └─ (BITMAP)
   └─ http://www...  (Registered item)
      └─ TEXT        (Formats in item)

What is the clipboard?

The clipboard is a shared area where applications 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 store multiple formats simultaneously. For example, when you copy text in Notepad:

• UNICODE TEXT
• LOCALE
• TEXT
• OEM TEXT

When copying from Excel or Access, even more formats are added to the clipboard.

Default Format Settings

By default, CLCL saves these formats to history:

• UNICODE TEXT (text)
• BITMAP (images)
• DROP FILE LIST (files)

You can configure which formats to save in Options → Filters.

History stores data copied to the clipboard. New copies are added to the top of the history.

Each history item contains multiple clipboard formats. The format registered in Options → Formats with the highest priority is displayed in menus and the viewer.

History limits are configured in Options → History. Additional formats can be added in Options → Filters.

Registered Items let you save templates and frequently used data. You can organize items in folders and give them names.

Adding Items:

1. Open the Viewer
2. Select a history item
3. Choose "Add to Registered Items" from the menu
4. Or select a folder in the tree, right-click and choose "New" to create items from files

Creating Folders:

1. Open the Viewer
2. Right-click where you want to add a folder
3. Select "Create Folder"

Renaming:

1. Open the Viewer
2. Select the item to rename
3. Right-click and choose "Rename"
4. Check "Clear name" to use the item's content as the display name

Special Characters in Names:

• Use - as the name to create a separator in menus
• Use & before a character to set it as a shortcut key (e.g., &File)
• Use && to display a literal &

Hotkeys:

You can assign hotkeys to registered items:

1. Right-click a registered item
2. Select "Hotkey Settings"
3. Press the desired key combination

Pressing the hotkey will copy the item to the clipboard. If "Auto-paste" is enabled in the action settings, it will also automatically paste.

Registered items have no history size limit.

There are several ways to paste history or registered items to the clipboard:

1. Tray Menu: Click the tray icon to display the menu, then select an item. The data is copied to the clipboard and automatically pasted to the active window.

2. Hotkey (default: Alt+C): Press the hotkey to display the menu, then select an item. The data is copied to the clipboard and automatically pasted to the active window.

3. Viewer: Select an item in the Viewer, right-click and choose "Send to Clipboard" to copy it to the clipboard.

Configure menu items shown in the tray/hotkey menu in Options → Actions.

Configure menu appearance and layout in Options → Menu.

Tooltips: Hover over history or registered items with the mouse to show detailed content in a tooltip. When selecting items with the keyboard, tooltips appear below the menu.

Tool Menu: Right-click history or registered items to show a tool menu. Select a tool to execute it on the item before pasting. To access the tool menu with the keyboard, press Ctrl while pressing Enter on an item.

History and registered items are displayed according to the format set in Options → "Menu Text Display Format". Numbers start from 0, but you can change the starting value by setting it between % signs:

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

Configure hotkey and tray click behavior in Options → Actions.

For action editing:

• Menu: Displays the menu configured in Options → Menu
• Call Method: Configure how to invoke the action (hotkey, double-tap modifier keys, etc.)
• Auto-paste: Automatically sends paste keystrokes to the active window after selecting a menu item
• Show at Caret: Display the menu at the text cursor position (for editor windows)
• Display Range: Specify which history items to show (start/end numbers)

Pressing Shift while selecting an item will skip auto-paste and only copy to clipboard.

CLCL can handle all clipboard formats, but unregistered formats are displayed as binary dumps in the viewer.

Register formats in Options → Formats. The highest priority registered format for each item is displayed in menus and the viewer.

To register a format, set the Format Name, DLL path, and Function Header. For example, to handle Excel CSV as text:

Format: CSV
DLL: (leave empty)
Function Header: text_

Configure which clipboard formats to add to history in Options → Filters.

• Add all formats to history: All previously configured formats are added to history
• Remove all formats from history: Only formats explicitly configured are added to history

For formats added to history, you can set a maximum data size. Data exceeding this size won't be added to history.

Setting "Don't Save" for a format in filters prevents it from being saved to files when CLCL exits. For example, you can configure CLCL to capture both text and bitmaps but only save text.

Configure CLCL behavior for specific applications in Options → Windows.

Specify window titles and class names using * as a wildcard. For example, for Notepad:

Title: * - Notepad
Class: Notepad

Either title or class can be specified (or both). Using * alone matches all windows.

Options:

• Don't add to history: Prevents copies from this window from being added to history
• Don't set focus: Prevents CLCL from changing focus to the window when pasting
• Paste even if tool is cancelled: Normally cancelling a tool cancels the paste; this option pastes anyway

Configure custom copy and paste keys per window in Options → Keys.

When selecting items from hotkey menus, CLCL sends paste keystrokes to the window (Ctrl+V by default), but some windows use different keys.

When invoking tools from hotkeys, CLCL performs: Copy → Tool → Paste, so it sends the copy key (Ctrl+C) to the window.

Set window-specific copy and paste keys in Options → Keys. Windows without specific settings use the default keys.

Multiple key configurations can be set; keys are tried in the order specified.

Tools let you process history or registered item data before pasting, or extend CLCL's functionality. Configure tools in Options → Tools.

Select a DLL and function to automatically configure execution timing. Execution timing can be:

• Popup menu: Available in options action menu
• Viewer: Available in viewer tool menu

Send copy and paste: Sends copy to the active window, runs the tool on the copied data, then pastes the result. Without this option, the tool runs on the newest history item and copies it to the clipboard. For right-click tool menus on items, the tool runs on the selected item.

Drag and drop DLLs onto the tool list window to register available tools from that DLL.

Launch CLCL with command line options to control its behavior. If CLCL is already running, the command is sent to the running instance.

CLCL.exe [/vownx]
  /v  Show Viewer
  /w  Enable clipboard monitoring
  /n  Disable clipboard monitoring
  /x  Exit

CLCL comes with four plugins in the Plugins folder:

Adds support for Windows metafile formats:

• Windows-format metafile
• Enhanced-format metafile

Adds Rich Text Format (RTF) support for better formatting preservation.

Text manipulation tools:

• To Lower - Convert to lowercase
• To Upper - Convert to UPPERCASE
• Quotation - Add quotation marks
• Un Quotation - Remove quotation marks
• Word Wrap - Wrap text at specified column width
• - Wrap text with custom tags
• Delete CRLF - Remove line breaks
• Connection of text - Join clipboard history into one text
• Edit - Open text in editor

Utility tools:

• Clear History - Delete all history items
• Clear Clipboard - Clear the clipboard
• Play Sound - Play a sound when items are added to history
• Always on Top - Keep viewer window on top
• Un Top - Remove always on top setting
• Save of more items - Save multiple selected items to files

To use plugins, extract the zip files and add the DLLs in Options → Formats (for format plugins) or Options → Tools (for tool plugins).

K.Takata (http://webs.to/ken/)

The author is not responsible for any damage caused by using this program. Please backup important files before use.

For bugs, feature requests, or questions, please contact: [email protected]

Copyright (C) 1996-2022 by Ohno Tomoaki. All rights reserved.

• Website: https://www.nakka.com/
• Release Date: 2022/12/1

• Windows XP or later
• Recommended: Windows 10 or later for best compatibility

Freeware - Free for personal and commercial use