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Featured Software
Submitted
August 13, 2024
by Dan Delong


Qlip from Softonic - clip retention

I had always assumed that Softonic carried trusted free software. Upon finding Qlip I hoped this to be true.

[Note: Qlip is not to be confused with Qclip, a similar app.]

However, getting to the real Softonic download link for Qlip required navigation through hoops designed to distract, along with redirects to ad supported links and overlay screens.

Qlip

Figure 1: This Softonic link may send you astray.

Qlip

Figure 2: A Softonic web page misdirection attempt

Qlip

Figure 3: Softonic download warning from Windows 11

Softonic admits not having checked out this program, but claims to supply a Mac link and links to other languages. My advice is to download directly from the author, as described below.

Qlip

Qlip, now in an early version 1.2.3 (June 17 2020), by Alex Robbins, may be safely downloaded at his GitHub repository. It's a Windows 599 KB msi installer, the same as the file from Softonic (if you can manage to download only that file).

I used the author's GitHub file to install Qlip, by answering the usual 'unknown publisher' warning with "YES".

Qlip

[The installed files amounted to only 83 KB in total, so what happened to the other bytes downloaded with the installer? I suspect some dotNet code is also involved here.]

Qlip

What does Qlip do? Well, when you copy text normally, then copy again, the previous content is overwritten by the new copied content. Not so with Qlip. It keeps all these text snippets in memory, in the order they were clipped. If you want to use any of the previously clipped text segments again, they all show up in a Ctrl-Shift-V list. I expected to be able to select the desired clip with a mouse click or finger (on a touch screen).

However, the interface seems to have changed to allow moving through with key pushes, followed by an auto-paste, after a short delay. That delay is set to a default of 2 seconds, which was too fast for me. [Fortunately, a QlipPreferences.EXE file is provided in the C:\Program Files\Qlip\Qlip folder, to lengthen the time to 4 seconds, or whatever delay you want.]

Qlip

Key StrokeAction
VNext Clip
TABNext Clip
UP-ArrowNext Clip
RIGHT-ArrowNext Clip
DOWN-ArrowPrevious Clip
LEFT-ArrowPrevious Clip
ENTERPaste
ESCCancel Paste
HOMEGo To First Clip In History
ENDGo To Last Clip In History
DELETERemove Current Clip From History
BACKSPACERemove Current Clip From History
XRemove Current Clip From History

Such clip buffers are lost when the computer restarts, or the Qlip program is stopped.

Here are examples of four auto-pasted text strings from our club's Facebook Group.

"This group has been set up to see if there is interest in our club to use Facebook, and to provide a Facebook presence for the public. Joining the Durham Personal Computer Users Club (DPCUC), now entirely online, offers monthly newsletters, Software reviews, advice for beginners, and a LINUX sub-group physical meeting. Send an e-mail to dpcuc@live.com for a quick response."
"As AI gets better and better, it's only going to make it more difficult to separate fact from fiction. Jon Stewart dives into the future of AI"
"This video takes you on a visual journey through time, exploring the incredible evolution of storage devices. From their humble beginnings to today's high-capacity options, witness the transformation of how we store our data. We showcase the storage capacity of some of the device's first model and highlight key years in their development."
"How Companies Profit off Unfixable Devices (ft. Louis Rossmann) Originally uploaded Jul 2024"


System requirements:

Platform: Windows 10 and above

Version: 1.2.3

Language: English

Download Size: 599 KB

Installed Size: 83 KB

Licence: FREE

Rating:

Download Site here.



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