How to copy/paste between your Macs and iOS devices

December 30, 2014

A few weeks ago, I put a call out on Twitter for Continuity-based copy/paste apps:

My kingdom for a Continuity-based copy/paste utility. Does this exist somewhere?

— Serenity Caldwell (@settern)

December 4, 2014

Since 2010, I'd been using Syncopy to sync clipboards between my Macs; unfortunately, the app had been virtually untouched since its release, and it got buggier with every OS X release. And that's not even talking about its iOS support, which was minimal and very quickly outmoded.

So, 2015 around the corner. Time for a new app to sync my clipboard. What better resource to turn to than Twitter? And though I didn't find a Continuity-based app, the iCloud-based ones I did find are pretty fantastic.

If you want share multiple clipboard entries

My first app came as a recommendation from Kirk McElhearn: CloudClip looks very similar to Syncopy on first glance, offering you a menubarlet that lets you sync the last 15 text, website, phone number, email, or map clips. The sync goes in both directions — anything you copy on your Mac will automatically be uploaded to CloudClip's database, and anything you copy on your iOS device will upload after you open the CloudClip app.

CloudClip's smart clipboard recognizes when you've captured a phone number or other piece of "rich" information, and it shows up accordingly. This is particularly cool if you copy something like a map address on your Mac and open the CloudClip manager on your iPhone — tapping the address's icon will automatically open the Maps app (Google or Apple) on your iOS device. (Tapping the address itself will copy it.)

CloudClip can also exclude clipboard entries from programs like 1Password, to prevent you from uploading potentially sensitive information.

Its one (potentially big) omission comes in the form of images: Simply put, CloudClip won't sync them. If you try and copy an image directly from the web, CloudClip will grab its web location, but not the image itself. As such, it may not be a perfect solution if you're looking to share images as well as your text clipboards.

CloudClip also requires that you open the app on iOS to sync the most recent clipboard entries from your Mac, which might be clunky if you want to instantly paste the last entry from your Mac to your iOS device.

But I like it for text, I like the easy access to my last 15 copies, and I especially like how quickly everything propagates across Macs and iOS devices alike.

If you want to sync images and have instant copy/paste between Mac and iOS

The other big copy/paste option in the sync space is Danilo Torrisi's Command-C, a menubarlet on OS X that lets you manually share your clipboard to iOS over Wi-Fi, and vice versa.

Unlike CloudClip, which automatically syncs anything you copy across devices, you have to initiate a Command-C sync for your most recent clipboard item. To do so, you'll need both devices on the same Wi-Fi network; from there, copy an item on your Mac and Command-C uses iOS's background app refresh to appear as a notification on your device and instantly copy that information to your clipboard.

Command-C is great if you'd prefer to target your clipboard saves to specific devices, and those devices are all on the same network. And it syncs images — something CloudClip distinctly lacks.

Which app should you pick up?

So which app is better, Command-C or CloudClip? It really depends on your use case.

For me, I copy very few items that contain sensitive information, and I'd prefer my clipboard sync be passive, rather than actively initiated. I also like having access to previous clipboard snaps on all my devices. But that said, I've also been using Command-C a fair amount to send GIFs over from my Mac to my iOS devices, or URLs I want to instantly sync. As such, I've ended up keeping both apps on my devices; I just use them for slightly different things.

What about you, folks? Do you need to sync your clipboards between devices? Have an alternate app you love and I should check out? Anyone developing an actual Continuity-based clipboard application? Sound off in the comments.