Ever stumbled across an article or piece of text you wish you had on another device? You could, of course, send a link to yourself over email, or you could use one of the many note-taking apps such as Google Drive or Evernote.
Microsoft looks to be doing away with the need for these methods. The company is testing a new app called OneClip, which will give users access to text on their clipboard no matter what system they're using.
"With OneClip, it's easy to get back to the stuff you've seen and used," reads the description of the app. "It might be a photo you took, a screenshot you made, a phone number or address you copied on your PC (and really need now while you're on the run) or just an important piece of text.
"OneClip makes this available to you automatically, on your behalf, on all your devices. A cross-device, secure, intelligent clipboard in the cloud. Why didn't anyone think of this earlier?"
Of course, it's important to note that someone actually did think of this earlier. In 2006, Ray Ozzie, then-chief technology officer at Microsoft demonstrated a web clipboard-type app.
The new app will use OneDrive, which is Microsoft's cloud offering, as a means to store and share information pasted to the clipboard. What this means is that while the new app might be available on platforms like Android and OS X, users will have to be subscribed to OneDrive and logged in on their devices to use it.
The app is currently in beta, and it's not yet known when it will make its way out of beta. Chances are that it might be released alongside Windows 10 as one of the operating system's new features. The beta version of the app has received rather good reviews so far, though there are only a few reviews available. All 12 of the reviews give five stars.
Cross-platform apps and services have become something of a focus for Microsoft of late. The company has been trying to make as many of its services as possible available on other platforms like Apple's iPhone — whereas in the past, the company wanted to keep its apps available to only Windows platforms.
Only time will tell if the app is as useful as it seems to be — or if it ends up suffering the same fate as Clippy.
