If you’ve tried Yojimbo and Notational Velocity and DEVONthis and DEVONthat and you’re still not sure which one is best for you, here’s another option for you.

With Automator and Quicksilver, it’s easy to create your own snippet filing system. You end up with something that grabs any text from the clipboard and saves it as a new file in a folder of your choosing. Searching your snippets is done with Spotlight.

First, create some destination folders, where your snippets will reside. Doesn’t matter what you call them. I have one called “newideas”, and you can probably guess the kind of snippet I like to keep in there. But you can have several, each assigned to a different kind of data (recipes? articles? reference? - you name it).

Now, in Automator, create a really simple two-step workflow. The first step is “Get Clipboard Contents” (which you can find in the list of System actions); the second is “New text file” (found in the list of TextEdit actions). Choose one of your destination folders as the place where this workflow will save stuff, and tick the “Show Action When Run” checkbox. Choose to show the selected items, and the Save As… option. The action settings should look like this:

Save this workflow as an application, with a nice short name (mine’s called “Idea”). Now, invoke Quicksilver and either train it to see the new app, or create your own custom trigger in the preferences if you prefer.

To use your new snippet-catching system, just select and copy anything you want to save, and use Quicksilver to quickly run your new Automator app and save it as a new text file (plain text or rich text, whatever you prefer - you’re using the TextEdit Automator action, so you have the choice) in the folder you created. Use one workflow to save everything in one folder, or create several and use each one for a slightly different purpose.