Paste, copy, convert

Klippster is not a converter you open. It is a pair of shortcuts and a Finder menu that move content between the clipboard and files, in whichever direction you need. All three conversions share one engine and one format list; what differs is only the source and the destination.

                    ┌─────────────┐
   Paste as…  ─────▶│             │
                    │  clipboard  │
   Copy as…   ◀─────│             │
                    └─────────────┘
                          ▲ │
                          └─┘  Convert to… never touches it —
                               file straight to sibling file

#Paste Clipboard as…

What it does: writes whatever is on the clipboard into the frontmost Finder folder as a new file, in a format you pick.

How: press ⌘⇧V with Finder frontmost, or right-click empty space in a Finder window and choose Paste Clipboard as.

What you get: a file in the folder that was open, named and ready. There is no save panel, because the folder is already the answer to the only question a save panel would ask.

The new file is named from the clipboard content where there is something to name it after, and otherwise from the time it was created — Clipboard 09.41.12.pdf.

#Which formats you are offered

The menu is built from what is actually on the clipboard, not from a fixed list. Klippster reads the pasteboard, decides what kind of content it holds, and offers only the formats that can represent it. Markdown detection uses Apple's swift-markdown rather than a regular expression, so a paragraph that merely contains a # is not mistaken for a heading.

This is why the menu looks different each time. A format that cannot represent what you copied is not greyed out, it is simply absent — an empty choice is worse than no choice.

#Copy to Clipboard as…

What it does: reads a file and puts its content on the clipboard in a different format.

How: select the file in Finder and press ⌘⇧C, or right-click it and choose Copy to Clipboard as.

What you get: converted content on the clipboard, ready to paste anywhere. The file on disk is read only — nothing is rewritten.

This is the one that saves the most time on PDFs. Selecting text in a PDF and copying it normally collapses the lists and tables; pulling it out as Markdown keeps the structure, so headings stay headings and tables stay tables.

#Convert to…

What it does: the same conversion as Copy to Clipboard as, written straight to a new file beside the original instead of going through the clipboard.

How: right-click the file in Finder and choose Convert to. There is no keyboard shortcut for this one, because it is the only conversion that does not involve the clipboard at all.

What you get: a sibling file. release-notes.md becomes release-notes.pdf in the same folder, with the original untouched.

#The Services route

There is a second way into all three conversions, and it matters more than it sounds: macOS Services. Right-click and look under Services for Paste Clipboard Here, Copy to Clipboard as…, Convert with Klippster… and Edit with Klippster….

These exist because the Finder right-click submenus come from a Finder Sync extension, and macOS never calls one inside iCloud Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive — which includes ~/Desktop and ~/Documents once Desktop & Documents syncing is on. Services are dispatched by macOS itself, so they appear in exactly the places the extension cannot reach, and they need no permission at all.

The trade is that a Service is a static declaration and cannot carry a per-format submenu. Each row opens Klippster's ordinary format chooser instead of pre-selecting a format — one extra click, in return for working everywhere. See Troubleshooting.

#Images stop at the editor first

Any conversion that produces an image can pause in Prepare Image — crop, resize, adjust, then pick the exact format and quality. That is a setting, not a prompt: if you would rather every image conversion just write the file, turn the editor off and it stops appearing.

#When a conversion is not available

Not every pair of formats makes sense, and Klippster does not pretend otherwise. If a file's type has no conversions defined, the Copy to Clipboard as and Convert to submenus appear dimmed rather than empty, so the answer is visible without a click.

If the pair you want is missing entirely, that is what Format Packs are for — a pack adds its conversions to all three of these surfaces at once, not just to the one you installed it from.

Next: Formats, for what each of the eight actually produces.