a Maccy alternative

check what macOS does first

before comparing two apps it is worth knowing you may need neither. macOS Tahoe put a clipboard history inside Spotlight. press ⌘Space, then ⌘4, and the last things you copied are there to search through. Apple documents it as searching what you have copied, it is free, and it is already installed.

turning it on, what to do when ⌘4 is already taken, and why something you copied is missing from the list — that is a procedure, and it has a page of its own. find something you copied earlier

what the built-in one gives you

for recalling a paragraph from twenty minutes ago it is enough, and it costs nothing to try. the switch is in System Settings → Spotlight, under «Results from Clipboard». it is off until you turn it on, and macOS warns about personal data first, which is fair: anything you copy lands there.

the same panel has a «Clear Clipboard History» button and a row naming how long entries survive: eight hours where nobody has moved it, with a stepper. that row sits at the very bottom of a long panel, which is most of why the figure gets described everywhere as undocumented.

Apple documents the section and how to clear it, though not the retention row: search with Spotlight on Mac — Apple Support

where Maccy is better than hop

this is the section comparison pages leave out, and skipping it would be worse than usually dishonest here: Maccy is free, open source and good at its job. four of its advantages are real. none of them are ours.

source you can actually read

hop is open source too, but Maccy is one small app doing one job. if you want to satisfy yourself that the thing watching everything you copy does only what it claims, that is an afternoon of reading. eighteen modules is not.

minimalism as a decision, not a gap

a shortcut opens the history, you type to filter, you press enter, it disappears. no panel, no tabs, no other tools sharing the window. for hands that stay on the keyboard that is the whole appeal, and a menu bar panel is a step backwards.

years behind it

Maccy has been maintained for years and still is: the App Store listing showed version 2.7.1, published in August 2026, when we looked on 10 September 2026. hop's clipboard module is younger by a wide margin, and time in the field is not a feature you can add.

one line to install

«brew install --cask maccy» and it is on the machine, which also means it updates with everything else you keep in Homebrew. hop is a download.

the two builds of one app are a recurring question on macOS: updates, sandboxing and what the store version may do all differ. the App Store version versus the one from the site

two ways to get Maccy, and only one of them is free

«free» is only true of one route. from the project's repository, from Homebrew, or built from source, Maccy is free and MIT-licensed. on the Mac App Store the same app is $9.99 — checked on 10 September 2026.

that is not a paid tier and there is nothing extra in it: it is how small open-source Mac apps let people pay who want to. we mention it because a price comparison that leaves it out is wrong in one direction and a scare in the other.

files, which is the real difference

the module has a page of its own: the depth, the search, and what it refuses to store. clipboard history in hop

copy a file in Finder and hop remembers it by name, and several at once show as «name +N». it pastes back as the actual file, not a path to it and not the name as text.

that matters in one common moment: you copied a file, went off to make a folder, copied something else on the way, and lost the first one. a history that only holds text cannot help there. whether the one in Spotlight hands a file back we have not been able to test, so we claim nothing either way.

the reason a copied file behaves unlike copied text is that the clipboard holds typed representations rather than a string: NSPasteboard — Apple Developer

what else lands in the same list

the history is not fed by ⌘C alone. text pulled off the screen by hop's recognition drops into it as it is recognised, and so does every colour taken with the picker. that is the shape of the difference: not a better clipboard, a clipboard that other tools you already have write into.

depth is a hundred entries, three hundred if you raise it, and nothing a password manager marks as concealed ever enters the list.

text taken off a paused video or a locked pdf goes to the same place. text recognition in hop

picked colours do too, each row carrying hex, rgb and hsl. the colour picker

is a separate clipboard worth installing at all

three of these rows end with «you do not need us», and that is not modesty — it is most of the answer. the case for hop starts at the fourth.

so: if the built-in history covers your day, install nothing. if it does not, Maccy is a fine answer and costs nothing. the reason to look at hop is that copied files keep disappearing on you, or that you would rather have one icon than seven.

nothing leaves the Mac either way

both keep the history locally. in hop there is no account, no sync and no server, and anything a password manager marks as concealed never enters the history at all.

no claim is made here about what Maccy does not do — we have not tested it that way, and the table above describes our side. the pinning and organisation dedicated managers offer is not something hop answers with.

local also means it is not on your phone. if you want what you copied on the Mac to be on the iPhone, neither of these does it — that is a paid, account-based feature wherever you find it.

the comparison where syncing between devices is the whole question, and the price a subscription rather than nothing. a Paste alternative

and the other seventeen, if the menu-bar arithmetic is what brought you here. everything in hop

frequently asked questions

both are free — why switch?

for files in the history, or to stop running a separate app for each small job. not for the feature list on text, where there is nothing between them.

does macOS have a clipboard history now?

since macOS 26 Tahoe, yes — inside Spotlight, ⌘Space then ⌘4, once you turn it on in System Settings → Spotlight. entries last eight hours by default. on Sequoia and earlier there is nothing.

does it keep copied files?

yes, by name, and several at once show as «name +N», pasting back as the real file. what the history inside Spotlight does with a copied file we have not tested, so nothing here rests on it.

why is Maccy $9.99 in the App Store if it is open source?

it is the same app either way. the store listing is a way to pay for something you could take for free from the repository or with «brew install --cask maccy». checked 10 September 2026.

how many items are kept?

a hundred by default, up to three hundred. that is a count rather than a time window, so something from last week is still there if you have not copied three hundred things since then.

is the history synced anywhere?

no. it stays on this Mac — no account, no server, nothing on your phone.

are passwords stored?

no. anything marked concealed by a password manager never enters the history, and the same is true of Maccy.

can i open it with a keyboard shortcut?

yes, though hop is built around a menu bar panel rather than a keyboard-first flow. if that flow is the point for you, Maccy is the better fit.

the hop side of this

clipboard history — everything you copied — text, links, screenshots and whole files.