Clipboard Rules is a free software which can automatically take actions based on text copied to clipboard. This free software lets you define rules corresponding to different type of text strings. And when you copy that text, then a trigger will be fired and the associated action will be performed. For example, you can open a program, execute a batch file, open a specific folder of explorer, replace clipboard text with something else, and write to a log file. Also, you can opt to execute one or more of these rules when you copy some text to clipboard.
Clipboard Rules comes as a portable software, so you can actually use it without installing it. And it has handy interface that you can use to configure it. You can define as many rules as you want and the software will follow them all when it detects the text on clipboard that matches the rule that you have specified. For example, you might specify that it should launch your email program whenever you copy a specific email address.
In the screen recording above, I have demonstrated a simple rule I have created to open Paint whenever “ilovefreesoftware” text is copied.
We have also covered a similar software which can change the case of clipboard text. And now, I will talk about this freeware which take actions based on text copied to clipboard.
Do note that a big limitation of this software is that it does not support regular expressions. You will need to enter exact strings that should trigger the actions. Also, the strings that you enter are case sensitive.
How to use this free Software to take Actions Based on Text Copied to Clipboard?
Clipboard Rules is a very nice software to take actions based on text copied to clipboard. It is lightweight software and doesn’t consume a lot of memory or disk space (it actually reminds me of the FPS game below 100KB in size!).
Here are few steps to use this free software:
Step 1: Download the portable executable of Clipboard Rules from its main page. After that, launch it and you will see its icon in the system tray of Windows.
Step 2: Click on its icon and its interface will pop-up. Click on the Add Rule button and another window will pop-up where you will have to configure the rule and specify the corresponding action.
Step 3: Now, you have to specify parameters like trigger rule, which is a case sensitive text. And define what action to be performed when that text is detected in the clipboard.
After defining the rule, you can click on the Save Rule button and minimize the software to tray. Now, when the text that you have specified is detected on the clipboard, the corresponding action will be performed. You can see the GIF that I have attached at the beginning of this article.
At anytime you can open its main windows to see all the rules and their corresponding triggers and actions that you have created. You can also choose to pause a rule.
Closing Words
Clipboard Rules is a pretty interesting software. It works pretty well. You can setup any type of action to be performed when any text is copied to clipboard. As I mentioned above, a big limitation of this software is that it does not support regular expressions, so that does limits its use and practicality. I hope developer adds this feature sometime down the line.
