MacClipboard 📋

Lightweight macOS menu bar clipboard manager that keeps track of your clipboard history with quick access and global hotkey support. Built to be fast, unobtrusive, and native to macOS.

Why

Managing clipboard history shouldn't be complicated. MacClipboard gives you instant access to your recent copies with a clean interface and global hotkey support.

Key Features

• 📋 Automatic clipboard tracking - Captures text, images, and files as you copy them
• ⌨️ Global hotkey - Press Cmd+Shift+V to open clipboard history from anywhere, or record your own
• ⭐ Favorites - Save important items that persist indefinitely
• 🔒 Sensitive mode - Hide content from shoulder surfing with Cmd+H (reveal with Cmd+V or eye icon)
• ⏸️ Pause capture - Stop saving new copies before a screen share or a customer's account, without quitting; the menu bar icon shows a struck-through clipboard while it is off
• 📝 Notes - Add descriptions to items for easier searching (e.g., "work password", "API key")
• 🔍 Live search - Find clipboard items quickly with real-time filtering (searches content, notes, and the app a clip came from)
• 🏷️ Source app - Each clip shows the app it was copied out of, and one click narrows the list to just that app
• 👀 Smart preview - Click any item to see full content before pasting
• 🖼️ Image preview - Full-size image preview with Cmd+Z
• 🔎 Read text from an image - Press Cmd+R on a screenshot to save the text in it as a new item, recognised on your own Mac
• 🎨 Colour swatches - A clip that is a colour (#3A7BD5, rgb(58, 123, 213)) shows the colour beside it
• 🎯 Quick paste - Click an item, or select it and press Enter
• 💾 Persistent storage - History saved to disk, survives app restarts
• 📁 Multiple content types - Supports text, images, and file paths
• 🗑️ Bulk delete - Select multiple items with Cmd+Click for deletion
• 🌗 Dark & Light mode - Automatically matches your system appearance
• ⚡ Minimal footprint - Native SwiftUI app with low memory usage
• 🔧 Highly configurable - Adjust history size, storage limits, retention days
• 🚀 Launch at login - Starts automatically when you log in (enabled by default)

Installation

Homebrew (Recommended)

brew tap rakodev/tap
brew install --cask macclipboard

Or in one command:

brew install --cask rakodev/tap/macclipboard

To update later:

brew update && brew upgrade --cask macclipboard

After installation, launch MacClipboard and enable Accessibility permissions (see After Installation).

Direct Download

Download the latest release from GitHub Releases:

1. Download MacClipboard-Installer.dmg (or MacClipboard.zip)
2. Open the DMG and drag MacClipboard to Applications
3. Launch MacClipboard from Applications or Spotlight
4. Enable permissions (see below)

After Installation (Required)

MacClipboard needs Accessibility permissions for the global hotkey and auto-paste to work:

1. Open System Settings
2. Go to Privacy & Security → Accessibility
3. Find MacClipboard in the list and enable it
4. If prompted, click "Open System Settings" to go there directly

Without this permission, the Cmd+Shift+V hotkey and automatic paste won't work.

Build from Source

See Development Guide for building from source and contributing.

Quick Start

After installation, the menu bar icon appears. Press Cmd+Shift+V or click it to open clipboard history.

Usage

Opening Clipboard History

• Menu bar icon: Left-click the clipboard icon in your menu bar
• Global hotkey: Press Cmd+Shift+V from any application, or whichever shortcut you recorded
• Right-click menu: Right-click the icon for quick actions

Pausing Capture

Before a screen share, a demo, or an hour in someone else's account, stop MacClipboard recording without quitting it:

• Right-click the menu bar icon and choose Pause Capture, or click the pause button in the clipboard window
• The menu bar icon becomes a clipboard with a line through it, so the pause is visible while you work in other apps, and it stays paused until you resume, including after a restart
• Nothing you copy while paused is saved, and resuming does not pick up whatever is on the clipboard at that moment: only your next copy is saved
• Your existing history, favorites and notes are untouched, and pasting from MacClipboard still works normally

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+Shift+V	Open clipboard history (global, default; rebindable in Settings)
Cmd+E	Edit a copy of the selected text item
Cmd+F	Switch between All / Favorites view
Cmd+D	Toggle favorite on selected item
Cmd+H	Toggle sensitive/hidden on selected item
Cmd+V	Temporarily reveal sensitive item content
Cmd+N	Focus note field for selected item
Cmd+Backspace	Delete items (shows confirmation)
Cmd+R	Read the text in the selected image into a new item
Cmd+Z	Open image preview (when image selected)
Cmd+Click	Add an item to the selection
Cmd+↑ Cmd+↓	Extend the selection up or down (Shift works too)
Cmd+M	Copy the selected items merged into one, top to bottom
Cmd+Shift+M	Split the selected item into one item per line
Any letter or digit	Start searching
Enter	Paste selected item
Shift+Enter	Paste selected item without its formatting
↑ ↓	Navigate between items
Option+↑	Jump to the top of the list
Escape	Close clipboard window / unfocus fields

While editing a copy:

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+S	Save as a new item
Cmd+Enter	Save as a new item and paste it
Enter	Add a line (editing never pastes)
Escape	Cancel the edit

Using Clipboard Items

• Preview: Click any item to see full content in the preview panel
• Paste: Click an item, or select it with the arrow keys and press Enter
• Search: Just start typing over the list, digits included; Tab focuses the search field
• Formatting: A clip copied from Word, Notes, Pages, Mail, TextEdit, a browser, Slack or any other app that offers styled text keeps its bold, italics, colours and links, and pasting it puts them back. Those items are marked with a text icon in the list and in the preview. To paste one as plain text instead, press Shift+Enter or click Plain ⇧⏎. The formatting stays stored either way, so the next paste of the same item can keep it. Text from a terminal or a code editor has no formatting to keep and behaves exactly as it always did
• Favorite: Click the star icon or press Cmd+D to save important items
• Sensitive: Press Cmd+H to hide content - useful when showing clipboard in public. Press Cmd+V or click the eye icon to temporarily reveal (auto-hides when you switch items or close)
• Edit a copy: Click the preview text (the caret lands where you clicked), press Cmd+E, or click the pencil icon. Saving adds a new item and leaves the original untouched. An edit of a hidden item stays hidden. Drag over the preview text to select it without opening the editor.
• Notes: Add a note to any item (press Cmd+N or click the note field) - useful for labeling passwords, API keys, etc.
• Search: Start typing to filter items instantly (searches content and notes)
• Multi-select: Hold Cmd and click to select multiple items, or hold Cmd (or Shift) with ↑ and ↓ to grow the selection without leaving the keyboard. Reversing direction gives back what the presses before it took, and items picked with Cmd-click are kept
• Merge: With several items selected, press Cmd+M or right-click and choose Copy Merged to join them into one new clip, in the order they appear in the list, top to bottom, one per line. The new clip goes on your clipboard ready to paste, and the items it came from are left as they were. Anything selected that is not text, such as an image, is left out, and the action says how many before and after. A merge that includes a hidden item is hidden too
• Split: The other direction. With a multi-line text item selected, press Cmd+Shift+M or right-click and choose Split to turn it into one item per line, ready to paste one at a time. Copy a column out of a spreadsheet, split it, and the lines are in the list in the order they were written, first line at the top. Blank lines are left out, nothing else is trimmed, the original item stays as it was, and a split of a hidden item stays hidden. Above 100 lines it asks first
• Colours: A clip that is nothing but a colour, such as #3A7BD5, #f53, #3A7BD580 or rgb(58, 123, 213), shows that colour as a swatch in the list and in the preview, with the hex spelled out beside it when the clip is written some other way. A colour mentioned inside other text gets no swatch, so a stylesheet does not come back covered in them
• Read the text in an image: With an image selected, press Cmd+R or click the text button in the preview toolbar. The text is recognised on your own Mac, with nothing sent anywhere, and saved as a new item at the top of the list, marked so you can tell it from something you copied yourself. The image is left exactly as it was, and what you had copied stays on your clipboard. It only runs when you ask: nothing is recognised in the background. An image with no readable text in it says so and adds nothing, and a hidden image has to be revealed first
• Where a clip came from: Each item shows the icon of the app that was in front when you copied it, with the name in the preview. The app button next to the search box lists the apps that have something in your history; pick one to see only its clips, or All Apps to see everything again. Clicking the app's name in the preview does the same thing. Because the clipboard itself does not record who wrote to it, this is the app that was in front when the change was noticed rather than a certainty: copy and switch apps in the same instant and the name can be wrong. Clips saved before this feature existed, and items you made yourself by editing, merging or splitting, show no app at all
• Image zoom: Press Cmd+Z on an image to see full-size preview

Content Types Supported

• Text: Code snippets, URLs, notes, messages
• Formatted text: The styling a clip was copied with, kept beside the plain text and written back when you paste it
• Images: Screenshots, copied images from web/apps
• Files: File paths and multiple file selections

Permissions

MacClipboard automatically requests:

• Accessibility: Required for automatic paste functionality and global hotkey (Cmd+Shift+V)

• Clipboard access: Automatically granted for clipboard monitoring

Settings

Access settings via the gear icon or right-click menu.

General

• Launch at login: Start MacClipboard automatically when you log in (enabled by default)

Clipboard History

• Maximum items: 10 - 1,000 items (default: 200)
• Older items automatically removed when limit is reached

Clipboard Persistence

• Save clipboard history (default: on): writes what you copy to disk, so your history is still there the next time you launch. With it off, only the current session is kept and nothing new is written. Switching it off does not delete what is already saved, so MacClipboard offers to delete that for you at the moment you switch it off, and says how much there is.
• Clear history when MacClipboard quits (default: off): saves your history as usual while you work, then deletes it when you quit, including a quit from a logout or an update. Favorites are kept. A force quit or a power cut leaves the history on disk, because nothing gets to run at that point.
• Save images to disk: Store images for faster loading (default: on)
• Storage limit: 10MB - 10GB (default: 1GB)
• Keep items for: 1 - 365 days (default: 60 days)
• Favorites: Kept indefinitely, regardless of retention settings

Privacy

Capture can also be switched off outright, from the right-click menu or the clipboard window; see Pausing Capture.

Two settings decide what is never recorded in the first place. Both are off by default, so nothing changes until you turn them on:

• Never save clips marked confidential by the source app (default: off): password managers mark what you copy as confidential. With this on, those clips are not added to history and never written to disk. They are gone rather than hidden, so a password you wanted for a minute is not there either.
• Never save clips from these apps (default: empty): pick apps, by bundle, whose clips are not saved. MacClipboard checks the clipboard every 0.25 seconds, so the app in front when a change is noticed is a good guess at the source of the clip, not a certainty: copy and switch apps within the same moment and the clip is saved.

Two further settings hide items that are saved, revealed with Cmd+V:

• Auto-hide sensitive content (default: off): API keys, tokens, and other formats that are recognisable
• Auto-hide password-like strings (default: off): 8-64 characters of mixed case, digits, and symbols. May have false positives.

Global Hotkey

• Enable/disable the global shortcut
• Record your own: click the shortcut, then press the combination you want. Cmd+Shift+V is the default, and it is also "Paste and Match Style" in many apps, so change it here if the two collide. Escape leaves it as it was, and Reset puts the default back.
• A combination needs Cmd, Option or Control, or a function key. Cmd plus a single key is refused, because a global hotkey would take that key away from every app you run.

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Enable/disable in-app keyboard shortcuts (Cmd+D, Cmd+H, Cmd+F, Cmd+N, Cmd+R, Cmd+Backspace, Cmd+Z, etc.)

Requirements

macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later.

Update

If installed via Homebrew, run brew update && brew upgrade --cask macclipboard (see Installation).

If installed manually, download the latest version from GitHub Releases and replace the app in your Applications folder.

Uninstall

If installed via Homebrew:

brew uninstall --cask macclipboard

If installed manually, quit the app and run:

rm -rf /Applications/MacClipboard.app
defaults delete com.macclipboard.app 2>/dev/null || true

Privacy & Security

• Clipboard data stays local: Clipboard history is stored only on your Mac and is never synced or uploaded
• Local storage only: History stored in ~/Library/Application Support/MacClipboard
• Explicit update checks only: The optional "Check for Updates" action contacts the GitHub Releases API; no clipboard content is sent
• Text recognition runs on your Mac: Cmd+R reads an image with Apple's on-device Vision framework. No image and no text leaves the machine, and it only runs when you ask
• Configurable retention: Set how long items are kept (or disable persistence entirely)
• Exclusions: Clips marked confidential by the source app, and clips from apps you name, can be dropped before they are recorded at all (see Privacy settings)
• Pause: Recording can be switched off entirely, from the menu bar, for as long as you want (see Pausing Capture)
• Secure by design: Only accesses clipboard when content changes
• Minimal permissions: Only needs accessibility for hotkey and auto-paste

Contributing

See Development Guide for how to build, contribute, and submit PRs.

Troubleshooting

Global hotkey not working?

• Check System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility
• Ensure MacClipboard is allowed
• If another app already uses the same combination, MacClipboard cannot register it. The popover and Settings both say so when this happens; record a different shortcut, or click the menu bar icon to open MacClipboard in the meantime.

MacClipboard is switched on in Accessibility but still says permission is missing?

macOS records the permission against the app's code signature as it was when you granted it. If that record no longer matches the installed app, the switch keeps showing as on while macOS refuses the app. Open the popover and click Repair in the orange banner: it removes the stale record and asks for permission again. The manual equivalent is:

tccutil reset Accessibility com.macclipboard.app
open -a /Applications/MacClipboard.app

More than one MacClipboard in Spotlight, or the banner says another copy has the permission?

Keep exactly one copy, in your Applications folder. macOS grants Accessibility access to one specific copy of an app, so a leftover copy in Downloads, on the desktop, or in a second Applications folder makes auto-paste fail while the switch stays on. MacClipboard now says so on launch and lists the copies under Settings > Installation, where Move Others to Trash cleans them up. To check by hand:

mdfind "kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier == 'com.macclipboard.app'"

Opened MacClipboard straight from the DMG or from Downloads?

Do not run it from there. macOS runs a quarantined app from a temporary location that changes on every launch, so no permission can ever stick. MacClipboard offers to move itself to Applications when it detects this; accept the offer, or drag the app to Applications yourself and open it from there.

App not capturing clipboard?

• Try quitting and restarting the app
• Check if another clipboard manager is running

Can't see menu bar icon?

• The icon appears as a clipboard symbol in your menu bar
• Try adjusting menu bar item spacing in System Settings

Menu bar icon click not working?

• Left-click the icon to open clipboard history
• Right-click the icon for settings and other options
• If clicks aren't responding, try restarting the app

Persistence not working?

• Right-click the menu bar icon and select "Settings..."
• Ensure "Enable Persistence" is toggled on (enabled by default)
• Check available storage space if items aren't being saved
• Persistence is disabled if storage limit is exceeded

Focus not returning after using clipboard?

• When you close the clipboard (Escape or click outside), focus automatically returns to your previous application
• If focus doesn't restore properly, ensure the clipboard app has accessibility permissions
• This works for both keyboard shortcuts and clicking outside the popover

Homebrew Installation Issues

"Refusing to load cask ... from untrusted tap"?

Newer versions of Homebrew ask you to trust third-party taps before installing from them. Trust the tap once, then retry:

brew trust rakodev/tap
brew install --cask macclipboard

"It seems there is already an App at '/Applications/MacClipboard.app'"?

This happens when a copy of MacClipboard already exists in Applications (for example, a previous manual download) that Homebrew did not install. Quit MacClipboard first, then let Homebrew take over that copy:

brew install --cask --force macclipboard

If you would rather start clean, remove the old copy first and then install normally:

rm -rf /Applications/MacClipboard.app
brew install --cask macclipboard

After a force install the app is replaced on disk, so macOS may ask you to enable Accessibility again under System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility.

"Cask 'macclipboard' is not installed" when running brew upgrade?

brew upgrade only works once the app is installed and tracked by Homebrew. If you installed manually before, run brew install --cask macclipboard (see above) so Homebrew adopts it; afterwards brew upgrade --cask macclipboard will work as expected.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

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Built with ❤️ for better clipboard management on macOS.