Feature Request: Make Snippets Visible in Alfred’s Clipboard History and Sort Accordingly

[Jasondm007]

I’d love to see an option added to Alfred that would make snippets visible in the clipboard history after they’ve been applied - and listed, in sequential order, with everything else on the clipboard.

 

At the moment, when you use Alfred’s snippet viewer to paste a snippet into an application, Alfred adds the snippet to your clipboard. For instance, if you just hit ⌘V, you can paste it again elsewhere. If you open Alfred’s clipboard history, however, you’d never know it. Why not give users the option to show the snippets they’ve applied in their clipboard history (and, as they copy and paste other things, just move it down the history like everything else)? This would be a ton easier than forcing users to navigate back through the snippet viewer, just to apply a snippet they recently used. When applying different snippets, from different collections, it's easy to see how this feature could save people a ton of time.

 

As far as I can tell, the only way to get around this limitation, at the moment, is to create a universal action. More specifically, the universal action is set to do a simple copy and paste from the clipboard. So, once the user has found the snippet they want to apply in the snippet viewer, they would have to (1) action the snippet from the viewer, and then (2) navigate to their new “copy and paste” universal action. Obviously, this would do the trick, as it’d get the snippet onto the (visible) clipboard history … but this is cumbersome as hell. It not only requires more clicking around, but it also necessities the foresight to anticipate when you might need to apply a snippet again, in short order, and should therefore use the new "copy and paste" universal action.

 

While I can certainly appreciate why people may want to keep their snippet history out of Alfred’s clipboard history, the opposite has always struck me as equally plausible. There are a bunch of ways this could be implemented, but I prefer the following two options:

• Global Approach: In the clipboard history section dealing with snippets (Features > Clipboard History > Snippets), add a 3rd option: “Show applied Snippets in Clipboard History”. Given that Alfred already has two different options to help people integrate snippets into their clipboard history—or to, at least, provide easy access to them—this feature request doesn't seem too far astray.
• Snippet-specific Approach: Within each snippet, add a new option (similar to the “Auto expansion allowed” option) that users can check: “Copy to clipboard on paste”. Or, you could also just add two new options in the “Type” drop down, such as: “Plain Text Snippet - Match destination formatting on copy and paste” and “Rich Text Snippet - Retain formatting on copy and paste where possible”.

My preference is for the Global Approach—or some variation of the two approaches where users could opt-in/out to everything, globally, and then opt-out/in on a per-snippet basis. But I’m open to anything!!

 

And, just to be clear, I understand this is easier said than done … and that there would be some obvious limitations (like the fact that snippets applied from the clipboard history would no longer be dynamic, if they were previously) … but this is a wish list, right? This has been driving me crazy for years!

[Terminal]

Actually it would likely be a trivial task to just add an option on this snippet level to `Mark as transient ` when creating a snippet. Which defaulting to that is like what they already do. 

Edited May 22, 2023 by Terminal