How to use text clipping in macos

In force since macOS 9, the “Text Clippings” function that we can translate as text clippings is a really little known feature among users, however it can be extremely useful. As its name suggests, a text clipping is a selection of text that has the particularity of being draggable from an application to another location on your Mac, for example the desktop, where it becomes a unique type of independent file that you can use later.

Text clippings, that great unknown

With the text clippings, you can save fragments of text for virtually any place for later use in another application or document.

To create a text clipping, all you have to do is select the text in question and drag and drop the mouse on the desktop or in an open Finder window.

Thus, the selected text, including any rich text format, will be saved in the destination as a .textclipping file. This extension, which is used to identify text clipping, will appear after the file name (the first words of the selected text) in the same way that.pages,.docx or.png files, among many other formats. In addition, you can change the name to make it more identifiable as you always do with any type of file.

To use the selected text in another file, such as a Pages document, simply drag the file from the text clipping (you don't have to open it) and drop it on the open document. The text will be pasted automatically.

You can paste text clippings by following the exact same steps (select, drag, drop) on all types of files and open applications, including also the web browser search engines that you use (Safari, Firefox, Chrome…), email messages and much more.

To quickly see the content of a text clipping, simply double-click on it or press the space bar when you have it selected to open it in Preview.

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