PopClip Puts Text Menus Right Where You Need Them [50 Mac Essentials #47]

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PopClip brings cute iOS-style select-and-click text tools to your Mac. It’s great.

Just select some text – just select, no clicking required – and familiar cut, copy and paste commands appear in little boxes above the text, just like they do on your iOS device.

Not just those commands, either, but others too: search the web, open links, reveal files (that last one is more useful than I imagined). It’s one of those tools you don’t know you need until you’ve tried it, then you think: “Hey. This is pretty neat.”

It works because the Popclip menu is immediately adjacent to the stuff you’ve just selected; your finger is already on the trackpad, or your hand is already on the mouse. It requires very little extra effort to use, and saves you time to boot.

PopClip costs just five dollars on the Mac App Store, but if you want to try it out first, grab the demo copy. It gives you 150 uses for free, which should be enough for you to make up your mind.

(You’re reading the 47th post in our series, 50 Mac Essentials: a list of the great Mac apps the team at Cult of Mac value most. Read more, or grab the RSS feed.)

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