I recently launched the v2 version of my Clop app, and thought to share it with other power users around here.
It’s a small app that sits in the background and waits for you to copy an image(e.g. screenshot to clipboard) and then optimises it automatically so that you can paste a more size-efficient image in chats, emails, upload boxes etc.
It can also watch specific folders for images and videos to be dropped, and then optimises them and shows the result as a drag-and-droppable thumbnail.
With today’s update, it also got a drop zone so you can manually optimise any file by dragging and dropping it there:
It also has support for macOS Shortcuts, I’m curious to hear from heavy users of Shortcuts if this would be useful and how it could be improved. I’m more used to the CLI, but I can see Shortcuts being useful for grabbing images from the iPhone camera, or sketches from iPad etc.
The app has an indefinitely free offering, with a Pro paid upgrade. The free version offers unlimited clipboard optimisation, and 2 file optimisations per session. The Pro license costs $8 at the moment.
That looks very intriguing as I copy a lot of photos. Does the app also work on the iPad? I ask because I use my iPad for a lot of work as well as my MacBook Pro.
Unfortunately iOS and iPadOS does not allow apps to sit continuously in the background and react to clipboard changes.
Something similar to Clop could be written for iPad, but it would be completely manual, working either through a Shortcut or a Share Extension.
I also feel the pain when having to include photos and videos in my blog posts, or when sharing annotated screenshots. I could not find any good solution on iOS.
Very useful app, thanks for the post. Simplifies my “Photos app to WordPress” photo workflow by dragging the pictures from the Photo app to the drop zone and from there (after image adjustments) to WordPress. Would be great if the drop zone could get a rename feature!
I’m actually collecting descriptions of how the app helps various workflows, to include them on the website. I’d be happy to send you a free Pro license if you could detail your workflow more, how Clop made it just a bit faster, or less painful, and how it could be even better
I’m working on a more powerful feature that can run any script on the optimised image/video, maybe it could help with the rename feature you need although I think it might be too technically complex if all you need is a rename, maybe I just need more details to understand your need.
Thanks for your fast reply. I already bought the Pro license :-). I’m happy to describe my main use case (there are others too) in more detail: I blog a lot and every article gets at least one cover photo, but often more photos as well. Most of the photos come from Apple’s Photos app. They then have a generic name like IMG_7210.jpeg. But for my blog I prefer to use a search engine friendly name like my-new-bicycle.jpeg. My workflow so far has been to export the image from the Photos app, rename it and resize it (both in terms of dimension and file size), then drag it into the upload area of WordPress. This is much easier now with Clop: I just have to drag it from Photos to the drop zone and then it goes directly to WordPress. Only the name I can then no longer change. So that would be something that would have to happen in the drop zone, maybe via a fourth icon or a context menu.
although I think it might be too technically complex if all you need is a rename, maybe I just need more details to understand your need.