The Plum Amazing Manifesto

For more than thirty years, we have built software with a simple goal:

Help people become more productive by improving the tools they already use.

CopyPaste began with Apple’s simple clipboard and a few obvious questions:

• Why can we copy only one thing at a time?
• Why can’t we see what is on the clipboard?
• Why does everything we copy simply disappear when something else replaces it?

We took the familiar act of copying and pasting and expanded it, month after month and year after year, creating an entirely new category of software—and building a devoted following along the way.

Technology should give us freedom.

Too often, it gives us repetition.

The same clicks.
The same keystrokes.
The same questions.
The same emails.
The same interruptions.

That recognition led us to create yKey.

yKey allows people to notice the repetitive actions they perform and automate them. One hotkey can replace fourteen clicks, seventeen menu selections, text entered into eight fields, visits to two websites, the preparation of a report, and the sending of an email.

We began doing this decades ago, and we are still doing it today. The new generation of yKey will go far beyond what we imagined when it was first created.

Individual repetitive actions may seem small, but over days, months, and years, they consume a surprising portion of our lives.

We have always believed software should remove those burdens.

That belief also shaped applications such as PixelStick, iClock, iView, iWatermark, and many others. Each began with the same observation:

There has to be a better way.

Sometimes the answer was a keyboard shortcut.

Sometimes it was remembering something the computer had forgotten.

Sometimes it was making an invisible measurement visible (PixelStick).

Sometimes it was automating a tedious process that nobody should have to repeat (yKey).

Today, artificial intelligence makes something even more ambitious possible.

AI is not interesting merely because it can generate text. It is interesting because, like us, it can recognize patterns:

• Patterns in repetitive work.
• Patterns in supporting others.
• Patterns in documentation.
• Patterns in business.
• Patterns of activity in our day.

Our goal is not to replace people.

Our goal is to free people to use their full potential.

Every repetitive task eliminated creates time for something more meaningful, like:

• Creating.
• Learning.
• Teaching.
• Building.
• Helping.
• Thinking.
• Being with family.
• Taking a walk.
• Beginning the next great project.

Our first customer is ourselves.

If these ideas cannot help us run Plum Amazing better, they have no business being offered to anyone else. So we are using them here first—studying our own repetitive work, preserving what we have learned, and building systems that allow us to spend more time creating useful things.

We keep asking one simple question:

How can we make sure nobody ever has to perform this repetitive task again?

Sometimes the answer is a better interface.

Sometimes it is a smarter application.

Sometimes it is automation.

Sometimes it is AI.

The particular technology is not what matters.

The outcome does.

Our mission is simple:

Preserve knowledge. Eliminate repetitive work. Help people focus on creative, meaningful problems.

If we succeed, people may not remember the automation itself.

They will remember what it gave back to them:

Time.

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P.S. You may have noticed we’ve been slow to respond. We are working on new versions of our apps for the transition to a macOS beyond Rosetta. We are also working on tools to help us respond faster. We are still working on the store and the new website. We hope you will enjoy what is to come.