Learn how to use the handy Text Clippings feature on Mac to save a snippet of text from a website, document, Terminal, email, message, or elsewhere.
Maybe you’re new to Mac and aren’t aware of the Text Clippings feature, or perhaps you know if it exists but have forgotten about it. This extremely convenient feature lets you grab snippets of text or an image from mostly anywhere and pop them onto your desktop.
How is this feature useful? It can be helpful in a variety of ways and here are five handy uses for Text Clippings on Mac.
Note: Even if you have enabled three-finger drag for your Mac’s trackpad, it may not always work for Text Clippings. Instead, we recommend force-pressing the trackpad and then dragging the selected text onto the desktop.
For research
If you are doing research on the web for something like an essay, you likely need to gather some information to get started.
You can simply select the text on the webpage you find, and drag it & drop it onto your desktop, where it’s easily accessible when you need it.
For emails and texts
Maybe you send the exact same wording using Mail or Messages on a regular basis. Select and snag that text from the next message you compose and drag it to your desktop.
When you want to use it, you don’t even have to open, copy, and paste. Simply drag that Text Clipping to/from your desktop into your message, and you’re done.
For notes or reminders
Say you’re getting ready to join a conference call and want to be sure you bring up a specific point or two from a document, report, or your own notes.
You don’t have worry about opening the file or app and locating the text when the meeting starts. Just select it beforehand and drag it to your desktop where it’s handy when the call begins.
For Terminal commands
There could be Terminal commands that you run on a regular basis, for example, the ping command. This is a great way to use Text Clippings. Select the command from Terminal and drag it over to your desktop.
When you want to run the command the next time, just drag the Text Clipping from your desktop into Terminal and hit Enter.
Text Clippings for images
You might need an image for a business document, article, or research paper. You find the one you want from a royalty-free image site and can just drag it over to your desktop with Text Clippings.
Then, when you’re ready to use it or edit it, it’s at your fingertips.
About your Text Clippings
Viewing: Double-click to open it as a Text Clipping, or select it once and hit your Spacebar to see a preview of it.
Organizing: If you have several Text Clippings saved to your desktop, you might want to move them to keep them organized. Using our research example above, you could put all clippings into a folder on your desktop to keep them together, but still handy.
Just select the clippings, right-click, and choose New Folder with Selection.
Renaming: Just like other files and images on your Mac, you can save Text Clippings with a specific name. By default, the first few words of the clipping are its name. To change it, just select it, click on the name, change it, and hit Enter.
You can also move, copy, send, and share your Text Clippings just like any other file.
Check out next: How to customize TextEdit on Mac for maximum efficiency