User Experience

If you’re using Yoink for iPad and iPhone’s Clipboard Monitor – which, if active, automatically saves anything you copy from other apps, even if Yoink is completely in the background –, you’re probably familiar with this dialog since iOS 16:

While this is useful information for apps you wouldn’t expect to be pasting at that moment, if you’ve activated Yoink’s Clipboard Monitor, you don’t want to have to confirm each and every single paste operation – it can get annoying very quickly:

I did file a feedback with Apple for adding an option to “Always Allow” pastes during the early days of iOS 16, and thankfully, in iOS 16.1, they introduced exactly that:

How to enable Always Allow “Paste from Other Apps” for Yoink.

– Open Settings.app
– Scroll all the way down to Yoink and select it
– Tap on Paste from Other Apps
– Select Allow

With this enabled (you can revoke it at any time using the same steps), you go from the confirmation-hell above to this:

When copying now, Yoink’s Clipboard Monitor picks up the copied item right away, without confirmation. A notification that a paste occurred is displayed.

You’ll still get notified that Yoink pasted from the source app, but you won’t need to confirm the paste each time 🥲

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With Yoink for Mac‘s clipboard history working again on macOS Big Sur and newer, I’ve seen, in forums and such, some questions about how the clipboard history operates and what it stores, in regards to privacy. I’ve answered those questions, but figured I’d let everyone know about it as well here on my blog, since this *should* be publicly available info:

General Notes about Yoink’s Clipboard History

  1. By default, the clipboard history feature is disabled.
    It has to be manually enabled by either clicking onto the widget in Notification Center, or in Yoink’s preferences, under Extensions.
  2. The clipboard history feature can be disabled at any time (and will clear any stored items at that point) in Yoink’s preferences, under Extensions.
  3. Individual items can be deleted in the Clipboard History browser, accessible by command-clicking onto an item in the widget, by selecting Clipboard History > Organize… in Yoink’s contextual menu, or by clicking Organize… in Yoink’s preferences under Extensions.

What the Clipboard History stores

By default, Yoink stores anything you copy or cut, be it some text from a document, an image on a website, or a file in Finder, for example. Please read “What the Clipboard History does not store” below for important exceptions to this.

The clipboard history can be configured by you to completely ignore copy/cut operations in certain apps. This can be done in Yoink’s preferences, under Extensions, by pressing “Ignored Applications: Edit…”

The clipboard history is stored locally on your Mac and does not leave your Mac, unless you do it manually.

What the Clipboard History does *not* store

Yoink completely ignores cut/copy operations from any app or process that has one of the following in its name:
Keychain, Enpass, 1Password, KeePass, LastPass, Password, Kaspersky, mSecure, AppLocker, Keeper Password, Passwort, oneSafe, Secrets, Strongbox, RememBear, Dashlane and Bitwarden.
Anything copied from an app whose name contains one of the above (case insensitive) does not get stored in Yoink’s clipboard history.

In addition to that, Yoink also ignores copied content from any app, if the resulting clipboard content contains any of the following data types (as suggested by developers, for developers, on nspasteboard.org):
com.agilebits.onepassword, org.nspasteboard.TransientType, org.nspasteboard.ConcealedType and org.nspasteboard.AutoGeneratedType.
If you copy something from an app, and that app writes, say, a string to the pasteboard, and also specifies one of the data types above, the clipboard history will not pick it up.

If you have any suggestions, possible additions, questions or feedback regarding this, please do mail me.

I’ve also updated my privacy policy to clarify all of this.

Long story short: I’m not interested in anybody’s data. I don’t do any tracking, no usage statistics, and, if my apps use your internet connection, it’s exclusively for a specific feature that it offers to you, the user.

Take care : )
– Matthias

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Yoink for iPad and iPhone Usage Tip #7

The following explains how to use Yoink on iPad in Slide-Over or Split View.
For more Usage Tips like this, click here.

It seems quite a few people have been getting new iPads recently – to those, I say: congratulations on your purchase 🥳
Coincidentally, that’s probably why I’ve been asked quite frequently lately how to use Yoink in Slide-Over or Split View.
Here’s a quick guide on how to do it.

1) Use Yoink in Slide-Over

– With a full screen app open, swipe up from the very bottom of your iPad to reveal the Dock
– Drag Yoink from the Dock to the side of your iPad’s screen

In Slide-Over, you can reposition Yoink to either edge of your iPad’s screen, or dismiss it by dragging it all the way to the right.

2) Use Yoink in Split View

– With a full screen app open, swipe up from the very bottom of your iPad to reveal the Dock
– Drag Yoink from the Dock to the top right of your iPad’s screen
– Alternatively, If Yoink is already in Slide-Over, drag the its top horizontal indicator to the top right of your iPad’s screen, and it will enter Split View.

In Split View, you can adjust the size of each Split view app by dragging the indicator between them.
You can remove an app from Split view by dragging the top horizontal indicator of the app.

Further Reading

Apple’s iPad User Guide
Use Multitasking on your iPad
Open an app in Slide Over

 

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Yoink for Mac Usage Tip #14

The following explains how to make Yoink automatically pick up any new file added to a specified folder.
For more Usage Tips like this, click here.

 

Yoink 256

If you’d like Yoink for Mac to automatically pick up any new files you download or save into a specific folder, here’s how it’s done.

Automator Folder Action

Automator, an app that comes with every Mac, allows you to create Folder Actions, which are small programs that run every time files and folders are added to a folder you specify.

I’ve prepared such a Folder Action for you: Download (direct download, ~42 KB)

Installation
  • Download the action above, then unzip and double-click it. It will prompt you with this:
Screenshot of Automator Installer 13 10 2020 14 39 16

Choose the folder you’d like to attach this action to and click on Install. The action will then be moved to /Users/yourname/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions/Yoink Save Folder.workflow
If you ever wish to uninstall it, just delete that file.

  • With the Folder Action installed, whenever you download or save a file into that folder, it will be added to Yoink, like you can see in this video:
  • To create multiple of these, all you need to do is unzip again, change the filename of the Automator action, double-click it and follow the instructions above
Details

If you’re curious about what the Folder Action actually does, it’s this:

Screenshot of Automator 13 10 2020 14 35 23

The action runs this shell script

open -a Yoink “$@"

any time new files or folders are added to the specified folder, which instructs macOS to open the specified file with Yoink (which ultimately results in the file being added to Yoink’s list).

Advanced

You can edit the shell script anytime (by right-clicking onto the Automator file and selecting Automator):

Screenshot of Finder 13 10 2020 14 54 50

which would enable you, for example, to tell the action only to add files of a certain file type, or with a certain file extension.
The following script sample shows how to make the Folder Action only add PDF files:

for str in "$@"
{
   filename=${str##*/}
   pathExt=${filename##*.}

   if [ $pathExt == 'pdf' ]
   then
      open -a Yoink "$str"
   fi
}

Enjoy 🙂

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