Keep clipboard history forever?

[playmakerx]

Hi,

 

For now I can only keep the clipboard history for a maximum of 3 months. But I just feel an increasing need to look back on things copies longer than that. Is there anyway to keep it permanent there? If it's not supported yet, will this be considered in future releases?

[Vero]

@playmakerx Any clipboard entry you use within that three months will be timestamped with a new date, and will stay a further three months.

 

If there are clips you'd like to keep even longer, your best bet is to save them as snippets.

 

Cheers,
Vero

[DevMan]

actually, this is the only reason to use other apps to handle clipboard.

I believe that customer has a right to store own data as long as he wish. and i can't understand what the problem to implement this.

 

so +1 for the ability to keep it forever.
 

Edited November 18, 2017 by DevMan

[deanishe]

2 hours ago, DevMan said:

I believe that user has a right to choose how long to store own history.

 

It's not that simple. If you set your history to "forever", then it's going to be enormous and potentially have a significant negative impact on performance and usability.

 

Sensible developer that he is, @Andrew probably isn't going to give you an option that might cause big problems (imagine how big the database would be with everything you've copied in the last 3 years).

 

That's why every clipboard history manager imposes a limit on how much it saves.

 

So, you have two realistic options: Create a snippet, as @Vero suggested, or manipulate Alfred's history database to ensure the timestamp of each entry is within the last 3 months.

 

The latter is fairly trivial to do. Alfred's clipboard history is contained in a normal SQLite database at ~/Library/Application Support/Alfred 3/Databases/clipboard.alfdb. The date of the clipboard entry is recorded in the ts column of the clipboard table. If you create a Launch Agent to add 86400 to the timestamp every day, your history will never expire.

 

But make no mistake: doing that will cause problems eventually, even if you only have Alfred set to remember plain text.

 

Edited November 18, 2017 by deanishe

[DevMan]

4 minutes ago, deanishe said:

If you set your history to "forever", then it's going to be enormous and potentially have a significant negative impact on performance and usability.

rly? i'm a software developer with more then 20 years of experience, and believe me or not but there is no "significant" impact to store data forever. especially on modern computers.
and other clipboard apps easily handle forever storing.

 

if you have some concerns just do huge tooltip "activate on your own risk" and that's it.

 

10 minutes ago, deanishe said:

The latter is fairly trivial to do

i'm not interested in tricks/hacks (anyway i appreciate your post, but this hack makes storing date info unusable).
i'm interested in getting reasonable  answer why such functionality is not implemented yet or why it can't be implemented or why it's not a feature request.

[deanishe]

27 minutes ago, DevMan said:

i'm a software developer with more then 20 years of experience, and believe me or not but there is no "significant" impact to store data forever. especially on modern computers.

 

Not if you have a RAID array and a clue, no. If you only have a 64GB SSD in your MacBook Air, then yeah, there is potentially a big problem giving users a button that could create a 20GB database in an invisible folder.

 

27 minutes ago, DevMan said:

other clipboard apps easily handle forever storing.

 

Namely? Serious question: All the ones I've tried impose a ~1000 item limit.

 

27 minutes ago, DevMan said:

if you have some concerns just do huge tooltip "activate on your own risk" and that's it.

 

Which is something Andrew has always been very hesitant to do. Because that's not it. Users don't read warnings. Or they forget. And then they send you an email. The Alfred team is exactly two people. Understandably, they don't like to give users "click here to start the countdown on your support request" buttons.

 

27 minutes ago, DevMan said:

i'm not interested in tricks/hacks

 

I think you're probably out of luck then.

 

27 minutes ago, DevMan said:

i'm interested in getting reasonable  answer why such functionality is not implemented yet or why it can't be implemented or why it's not a feature request

 

I think I've answered that question. You can, of course, submit a feature request in the appropriate forum. I suspect it will be rejected for the reasons I've stated.

 

Please also bear in mind that Alfred isn't a clipboard manager: it's a launcher with a clipboard history feature. As such, it's not intended to be the clipboard manager for all people (or the snippet expander). It covers a lot of people's requirements, but inevitably, a lot of "hardcore" clipboard/snippet users will need to use a dedicated app.

 

Edited November 19, 2017 by deanishe

[DevMan]

1 minute ago, deanishe said:

If you only have a 64GB SSD in your MacBook Air, then yeah, there is potentially a big problem giving users a button that could create a 20GB database in an invisible folder

it's user choice.
frankly said from this point of view workflows feature is more dangerous but it's implemented.

 

8 minutes ago, deanishe said:

Namely? Serious question: All the ones I've tried impose a ~1000 item limit.

clipmenu, clipy, paste.

 

15 minutes ago, deanishe said:

think I've answered that question

unfortunately not.

[deanishe]

13 minutes ago, DevMan said:

it's user choice.
frankly said from this point of view workflows feature is more dangerous but it's implemented.

 

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Built-in features create support requests for the Alfred team. Workflows create support requests for the workflows' authors.

 

While workflows can, and do, cause far more issues than Alfred itself, it's not the Alfred team's responsibility to field those questions.

 

That's the core issue with your request, IMO: it will inevitably lead to increased support requests for the Alfred team.

 

13 minutes ago, DevMan said:

clipmenu, clipy, paste.

 

Thanks. I'll check them out.

 

13 minutes ago, DevMan said:

unfortunately not.

 

Then please submit your feature request in the appropriate place so you can get an official response.

 

Edited November 19, 2017 by deanishe

[DevMan]

2 minutes ago, deanishe said:

Then please submit your feature request

already done. and thank you for the discussion.