clipboard manager for Mac

the clipboard history macOS 26 gives you for free

macOS 26 Tahoe put a clipboard history inside Spotlight. press ⌘Space, then ⌘4, and the last things you copied are listed there. click one and it is back on the clipboard, ready to paste. the first time you look, Spotlight puts a consent sheet in front of you instead of a list, because what you are switching on is a record of everything you copy. after that it is two keystrokes.

it is free, it is already on the machine, and for the ordinary version of this problem — you copied over the address you were about to paste, half an hour ago — it is the entire answer. a page selling you a clipboard manager should say that first, so: start there.

switching it on, the consent sheet, and what to do when ⌘4 opens something else — the procedure end of this, in full: find something you copied earlier

what the built-in history does not let you set

• System Settings → Spotlight carries three controls: a switch named «Results from Clipboard», a row reading «Clipboard history is available in Spotlight» with the retention beside it — eight hours on a Mac nobody has changed — and a button named «Clear Clipboard History». that is the entire panel.
• there is no depth setting, and nothing can be marked as worth keeping. the address you paste every day this month ages out on the same schedule as a verification code you used once.
• how long that schedule runs is on the panel, at the bottom: eight hours on a Mac nobody has changed, with a stepper to move it. Apple's own page documents the feature without mentioning the setting, which is why the figure is so widely reported as unpublished.

Apple documents the section and how to clear it, though not how long it keeps things: search your clipboard history in Spotlight

the clipboard is not the only thing that release moved, if you have just updated and things are not where you left them: what macOS 26 changed for menu bar apps

where a Mac clipboard manager still earns its place

against macOS 26 the honest comparison is horizon, not existence. Spotlight covers today, for free, and nothing here is going to argue with that. the two part company on how far back you can reach, and on what happens when the Mac is older than the feature.

the horizon is the whole argument

a day of ordinary work is dozens of copies. that is what makes the difference practical rather than theoretical: the thing you want from Tuesday has aged out of the window and sits behind several hundred newer entries besides. depth and reach are the same problem wearing two hats, and a hundred entries, three hundred if you raise it, is what hop answers with.

so the rule is short. if what you want is from today, the built-in history is the end of it and you do not need us. the simple case stops the moment you find yourself reaching for something older than this morning, or copying the same snippet back in for the fourth day running.

before macOS 26 there is nothing to compare with

on Sonoma and Sequoia this is not a worse clipboard history, it is no clipboard history. the Mac holds exactly one item, and the one before it was never written down, so nothing recovers it after the fact. hop runs on macOS 14 and up, which is the other half of who this module is for.

text pulled off a screenshot or a video frame lands in the same list as everything else you copied: text recognition

how hop's clipboard history works

1. open the panel and pick clipboard — the last hundred things you copied are there, newest first, up to three hundred if you raise it.
2. type to search once the list is longer than you can scan. text, links, screenshots and files are all in there, not only plain text.
3. click an entry to put it back on the clipboard.
4. or paste it straight into the app you were just working in, without switching back to it first.

files come back as files

copy a file in Finder and hop keeps it by name; grab several at once and the entry reads «name +N». pasting puts the actual file back rather than a path to it, which matters in exactly the situation that produces it: you copied a file, went off to make a folder, copied something else on the way, and lost the first one.

the other modules write into the same list

a colour picked off the screen and text lifted by recognition both land in the clipboard history as they happen. neither of those is something you copied, so neither has any route into the built-in list. this is the one place where the two are not doing the same job at different depths.

the colour picker end of that, if hex codes are what you keep losing: get the hex code of a colour on screen

and if the thing you wanted would not let you select it in the first place, the clipboard is the wrong end of the problem: copy text from a video or a locked document

what never enters the clipboard history

anything a password manager marks as concealed is skipped and never stored. this is not an advantage over the built-in history: macOS works on the same principle, and a clipboard manager that got it wrong would be dangerous rather than merely worse. it gets stated plainly here because it is the first thing people ask.

the history stays on this Mac. no sync, no server, no account, and nothing copied on your iPhone appears here either: Universal Clipboard carries the latest item across and keeps no history on either side.

the clipboard holds typed representations rather than a string, which is why a file can sit on it while a shell tool reports nothing at all: NSPasteboard

pasting into the app underneath needs permission

putting an entry straight into the app you were last in means acting on that app's behalf, and macOS gates that behind Accessibility. until you grant it, the paste quietly does nothing: the entry lands on the clipboard and stops there, which reads like a bug and is not one. clicking an entry to copy it back works without any of this.

why a clipboard manager asks for that permission at all, and what it can and cannot do with it: why Mac apps ask for accessibility

Spotlight took over app launching in the same release, so the panel it opens may be unfamiliar for more than one reason: open your apps without Launchpad

frequently asked questions

does macOS have a clipboard manager built in?

since macOS 26 Tahoe there is a clipboard history inside Spotlight — ⌘Space then ⌘4, once you allow it. it is not a full manager: what it gives you is a time window, eight hours by default, and nothing can be held back from ageing out of it. on Sequoia and earlier there is nothing at all.

do i still need a clipboard manager on macOS 26?

for anything you copied today, no. use Spotlight and save yourself an install. the case for a separate one is reach: the last hundred entries, three hundred if you raise it, rather than a time window that starts at eight hours.

how long does the built-in clipboard history keep things?

nobody outside Apple can tell you. the figure is not on Apple's page, not on the settings panel, and not in the app itself, and the numbers circulating online disagree with each other. any page quoting a specific one is guessing.

can i pin something so it stays?

not in the built-in history, and not in hop either: neither has pinning. what hop offers instead is depth. an entry stays in the list until enough newer things push it off the end, which for a hundred or three hundred entries is a good deal longer.

does it keep copied files?

yes, by name, and pasting puts the real file back rather than a path to it. several grabbed at once show as «name +N».

are passwords saved in the history?

no. anything a password manager marks as concealed is skipped, on the same principle macOS itself uses.

is the history synced to my other devices?

no. it stays on this Mac — no account, no server, no sync. anything copied on an iPhone does not appear here either.

can i search what i copied?

yes, type to filter the list. screenshots, links and files are in there alongside plain text, and so are colours picked with hop's colour picker and text lifted by its recognition.

other tools in hop

• window layoutseighteen zones, one click or one hotkey.
• draw on screena transparent layer over the live screen, seen by everyone on the call.
• keep awakedownloads, renders and calls run to the end. even with the lid closed.

what people do with this

• you copied over the thing you needed

what people pay for this

prices checked at the vendor's own page on 2 september 2026