orrinfacey01: Quickly get the contents of .webloc or .textClipping files

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Quickly get the contents of .webloc or .textClipping files

Here's is a very simple tip for working with .webloc and .textClipping files. Sometimes I drag some selected text to the desktop to create a clipping that I can forget about until later. When the selected text is an actual URL, the clipping becomes a .webloc file instead of a .textClipping file, of course.

I find that I want to quickly get either the contained URL of the .webloc file or the contents of the .textClipping back onto the Clipboard in a hurry. One quick way to do that is the same way I would get the text path of a normal file to my Clipboard. I just begin dragging the .webloc or .textClipping file to the upper right corner of the screen, and sometime before it gets there, I press Command+Spacebar to activate the Spotlight search field.

When I drag the file into the search field, I drop it in there while the cursor displays a green circle with a white plus sign. If it's a .webloc or a .textClipping, the search field instantly displays its contents, whic ...