ClipBuddy for Mac features Every feature, shown working.

Clipboard history, search that reads screenshots, an editor for any clip, the Paste Stack, snippets and the privacy controls. Each one below is the real interface, live, and the full list follows.

Download on the Mac App Store Learn how to use it

Clipboard history
Search Pro
Text in screenshots Pro
Edit before paste
Quick actions (⌘K)
Transforms
Paste Stack Pro
Snippets
Clipboard undo
Labels and themes
Privacy

Find it

Everything you copied, found in a keystroke.

Your history lives on your Mac, opens over any app, and answers to the words in it, even the words inside a screenshot.

Free ⌘⇧V

Every copy, saved and one keystroke away

ClipBuddy keeps what you copy: text, links, images, files, code and JSON. Press ⌘⇧V in any app and the drawer slides up with your history as cards.

Arrow keys and ⏎, or ⌘1 to ⌘9 for a card
Pin the clips you reuse
Free keeps your last 10 clips; Pro keeps up to 200,000

Read the step-by-step guide

ClipBuddyPick a theme you like

16 of 16

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

Pro ⌘⇧Vthen type

Search that forgives typos and reads meaning

Start typing and the cards narrow as you go. A misspelling still finds the clip, matches are highlighted, and filter chips narrow by app, type or date.

Search by meaning finds a clip without its exact words
Voice search transcribes on your Mac
Saved searches and a Frequent tab

Read the step-by-step guide

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

Pro

Find a screenshot by the words inside it

ClipBuddy reads the text in images with Apple's Vision framework, on your Mac. Search for a word you saw, then copy the text straight back out.

Copy Text pulls the words out of any image
Smart actions spot phone numbers, emails, links, dates and addresses
Scan a QR code or barcode out of an image

Read the step-by-step guide

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

Shape it

Fix a clip on the way out.

Edit it, run an action on it or reshape it before it lands, without a scratch file and without changing the original unless you choose to.

Free ⌘E

Edit before you paste

Press ⌘E on a text clip and change it in place: a real editor with bold, italic, underline and strikethrough as portable Markdown or HTML, the Transform menu, and a live count of characters, words and lines.

Copy as new keeps the original and copies your edit
Overwrite clip replaces the original and copies it
Included on every plan

Read the transforms guide

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

Free ⌘K

Every action for a clip, one key away

⌘K opens the action bar for the selected clip, grouped the way you work: paste or copy, quick actions like Fix spelling, QR Code and Transform, then label, burn or delete. Type to filter it.

Right-click a card for the same bar
Images get Copy Text, Scan QR, Remove background and Redact
Links open in your browser, files reveal in Finder

Read the quick actions guide

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

Free

Reshape text without a scratch file

Eighteen built-in transforms change case, trim, encode and format a clip: camelCase, snake_case, Base64, URL encoding, JSON prettify or minify, SHA-256 and more, with the same output as the app.

See the result before you copy it
Copy the result, or replace the clip
Developer tools add JWT decode, XML and SQL formatting

Read the step-by-step guide

TextThe selected clip. Edit it to try your own text.

Transform↑↓ choose · ⏎ copy · esc close

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

Paste faster

Fewer trips between windows.

Collect several things and paste them in order, keep the text you type every day as snippets, and take back a copy you overwrote.

Pro ⌘⌥S

Paste Stack: collect several, paste them in order

Start collecting from the menu bar, copy the pieces you need, then press ⌘⌥S at each destination. Stack order pastes your newest copy first; switch to Queue to paste in the order you copied.

Holds up to 50 clips
Restore Previous Clipboard puts your old copy back
Made for forms, contact details and checklists

Read the step-by-step guide

SafariFileEditViewHistoryWindowHelp9:41

Contact card

NameJordan Lee

Emailjordan@example.com

CompanyNorthwind Studio

Sign up · Northwind

NameEmailCompany

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

10 free, unlimited with Pro ⌘⇧Vthen keyword

Snippets that type themselves

Save the text you type again and again and give it a keyword. Switch on keyword expansion and typing ;addr in any app turns it into your address; or pick it from ⌘⇧V. Blanks like {{Name}} ask for a value before the text goes in.

Keyword expansion in any app, off until you switch it on
Tokens for the date, the time, the clipboard and fill-in fields
With Pro: AI prompts, chains, and imports from TextExpander, aText and Raycast

Read the step-by-step guide

MailFileEditViewMessageFormatWindowHelp9:41

New Message

To: sam@example.com

Subject: Thanks for today

Choose a snippet below and press ⏎.

ClipBuddy

5 of 5

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

Free ⌘⌥Z

Clipboard undo, for the copy you lost

Copied over something you needed? ⌘⌥Z steps the clipboard back to what it held before, one copy at a time, from any app.

Free goes back 10 copies, Pro 30
Nothing to open first: it works from the keyboard
Your history keeps every copy either way

Read the step-by-step guide

FinderFileEditViewWindowHelp9:41

Clipboard

Clipboard contents: textTracking number 1Z 999 AA1 01 2345 6784

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

Yours, and private

Set up the way you work, and kept on your Mac.

Labels, themes and layouts make the picker feel like yours. Privacy is not a setting: there is no account, no network access and nothing collected.

Themes free, labels Pro

Labels, themes and a picker that fits

File clips under labels and filter with one click. Pick from 42 themes, cards or rows, and five places for the picker to open, including right at your pointer.

Labels and the Vault sit in the tabs row
Light, dark or true black
Your own text size and font for the picker

Read the step-by-step guide

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

Free

Private by design

No account, no network access, Data Not Collected. Passwords and other concealed copies are never saved, and one switch keeps ClipBuddy out of screen shares and recordings.

Choose apps it never captures from
Touch ID Vault for keys and tokens (Pro)
Encrypted backups with your own passphrase (Pro)

Read the step-by-step guide

ClipBuddy

Capture & privacy

Control what gets saved to your history.

Protection

Skip passwords & secretsConcealed pasteboard items are never saved.Always on

Mask sensitive contentBlur token-like clips until you click Reveal.

Clean tracking linksStrip utm_*, fbclid and gclid when you copy a link, so you paste the bare URL.

Hide while screen sharingClipBuddy stays visible on your Mac but is left out of screen shares, recordings and screenshots.

Your screen

What viewers see

● REC

Live preview, built from the app's own interface. Click around, it works.

New in 3.4

Notes and Snippets are here. Draw is next.

ClipBuddy 3.4 brought Markdown notes and a snippets workspace into the same app as your history. Draw, for diagrams, is built and being tested. These are real screens from the app.

New in 3.4 In the App Store version

Notes that link up

A Markdown workspace for what you want to keep, not only until it ages out of your history.

Browse the note templates

ClipBuddy Notes: a Markdown note titled Launch checklist with a formatting toolbar, line numbers and tags — New in 3.4 A screen from ClipBuddy 3.4. Hover or tap a number to look closer.

And there is more

15 more features, each with its own guide.

The complete list

Every detail, in one place.

Every ClipBuddy capability in one place: searchable history, meaning and screenshot-text search, snippets that expand as you type, Markdown notes, templates, on-device AI, slots, the paste stack and transforms.

ClipBuddy for Mac is a native macOS clipboard manager (a Mac app, not a browser extension). It remembers everything you copy, makes it searchable and one keystroke away, keeps your reusable snippets ready to type, holds your Markdown notes, and keeps everything on your Mac. Here is everything it does.

119 details in 31 topics

Clipboard history

Automatically saves everything you copy: text, images, links, files, code and JSON.
Searchable across your whole history: type to filter instantly.
Open from anywhere with ⌘⇧V; press Enter to copy it back, then ⌘V pastes it right where you were.
Smart filters by type: links, JSON, files, images, code.
Resizable picker drag the width and height, or cycle a size preset from the header.

See ClipBuddy as you want: UI customization, themes and layouts

5 Screen placements Dock the picker wherever suits your ergonomics: Screen Bottom (classic horizontal card ribbon), Screen Top (dropdown bar beneath the menu bar), Screen Left (vertical side drawer), Screen Right (dock-aligned side drawer), or Mouse Pointer (compact floating panel that appears directly where you are typing).
Horizontal ribbon vs. vertical grid Switch between a single-row horizontal swipeable card strip and a multi-column vertical grid (1 to 6+ columns) with automatic card reflow.
Direct interactive card resizing Drag the corner handle directly on any preview card to resize card width (0.85× to 2.2×) and height (0.7× to 2.2×) live in the drawer without opening a settings menu.
Card spacing & padding Tune the gap between cards (0.2× to 2.6×) and the outer drawer edge padding (0.4× to 2.0×).
Frosted Glass surface Turn on translucent blurred background material that lets your macOS desktop wallpaper softly show through, or use solid AppKit surfaces for high-contrast focus.
15 editor themes Nord, Dracula, Catppuccin, Tokyo Night, Rosé Pine, Gruvbox, Solarized, One Dark, GitHub, Ayu, Everforest, Kanagawa, Night Owl, Palenight and Synthwave '84, beside the original 27.
27 Curated Theme Combos Choose from coordinated accent and card-tint pairings across Warm (Sunset, Amber, Gold, Crimson, Rose, Clementine, Banana, Sunrise, Coffee), Cool (Ocean, Teal, Indigo, Mint, Lagoon, Sea Glass, Mood Indigo), Rich (Forest, Grape, Berry, Aubergine, Jade, Raspberry, Lemon Lime), and Neutral (Classic, Slate, Gray, Super Black).
Super Black OLED Mode True #000000 pitch black surface engineered for Liquid Retina XDR and external OLED displays where black pixels turn completely off.
100% Custom Hex Color Slots Define your own exact hex colors for Drawer Background, Card Background, Primary Text, Secondary Text, Accent Highlight, and Hairlines.
Live Typography Scaling Pick your preferred font family (SF Pro, SF Mono, SF Pro Rounded, New York Serif) and scale text live across 5 sizes (Small, Default, Medium, Large, Extra Large) without restarting the app.
Labels & Smart Folders position Place collections as horizontal pill chips above the search bar or as a dedicated 190pt vertical sidebar rail down the left side.
Card action footers Choose between distraction-free minimalist hover cards and always-visible action icon footers (Pin, Diff, JSON, Plain Text, Burn, Delete).

full UI & Theme Customization Guide

Search: meaning, filters and smart folders

Universal Search one query in the picker surfaces matching clips, emoji and Labels together, so you find anything in one place instead of switching tabs.
Search by meaning find "that wifi password" or "the address" even when those exact words aren't in the clip. Runs on Apple's on-device language model: nothing leaves your Mac.
Filter chips pick a filter and it drops a removable pill into the search bar: app:, type:, date (after:/before:, today, 7d), has:link/email/phone/number/code. Combine freely; same-category filters OR, different ones AND.
Exact phrases with "quotes", exclude with -word, OR with a|b, plus a sort menu (newest, oldest, most-copied, recently-used).
Typo-tolerant a misspelled query still finds the clip: search "recieve" and the clip that says "receive" still comes back.
Ask in plain language type "screenshots from Chrome last week" and ClipBuddy turns it into ordinary filter chips you can see and edit. It never guesses silently: every part of the query becomes a chip, so you always know what it searched for. Runs on Apple's on-device model (needs macOS 26).
Voice search tap the mic in the search bar and say what you are looking for. Transcribed entirely on your Mac with Apple's on-device speech, and the microphone is used only while you are actively dictating. Hidden on Macs without on-device speech.
Saved searches become smart folders pin a query as a live chip in the picker and reopen it anytime.
Show in timeline from any result, jump to the moment you copied it and see what you were working on either side of it.
Matched terms are highlighted in every result so you see why it matched.

Screenshot & image text search (on-device)

Reads the words inside images and screenshots using macOS Vision, on your Mac.
Find a screenshot by typing the text it contains (e.g. search "invoice").
Copy the text back out open an image clip and pick the exact word, line or block: no retyping needed.
Screenshot smart actions ClipBuddy spots a phone number, email, link, date or address in a screenshot and offers one-tap actions: Call, Email, Open or Map.
No upload, no server: recognition happens locally.

Encrypted backups

Export your whole history to a single passphrase-encrypted file: AES-256-GCM, with the key stretched by PBKDF2-SHA256 over 210,000 iterations.
No escrow and no recovery. The passphrase never leaves your Mac and nobody can reset it, which is the point: a lost passphrase is a lost backup.

Markdown preview

Copy Markdown and read it rendered in a popover (headings, lists, links, code), then copy back either the source or the plain text.
Rendered by Foundation's native Markdown engine. No web view, no network.

On-device AI: Summarize, Rewrite, Extract & Explain

Summarize any text clip to 1–3 sentences, or Rewrite / format it (fix grammar, punctuation and structure), as a quick action.
Extract action items pulls the tasks out of a clip as a bullet list; Explain this puts code, a regex, a shell command or an error into plain language.
Powered by Apple Foundation Models: the on-device LLM, with Apple Intelligence turned on in System Settings. Nothing leaves your Mac.
Each action is a separate switch, off by default; Pro, and available on macOS 26+ (the rest of ClipBuddy runs on macOS 13+). The model is only loaded when you use one.

Copy Sessions

Your history groups itself into work sessions (such as a coding sprint or a research dig), split whenever you step away for more than half an hour, and labelled by the app you used most.
Open a session to see everything you copied in one sitting and copy any of it back. Save the sessions worth keeping; your history is never touched.
Pure grouping of clips you already have. Nothing to set up, nothing captured that wasn't already.

Paste power: undo, slots and a stack

Clipboard undo (⌘⌥Z) overwrote something? Walk the clipboard back through recent history.
Clipboard slots (⌘⌥1–9) nine reusable registers for the text you retype all day: save with ⌘⌥⇧1–9, paste with ⌘⌥1–9.
Paste Stack (⌘⌥S) collect several copies, then paste them back one at a time: perfect for filling forms.

Paste, your way

By default, picking a clip copies it you paste with ⌘V, no extra permissions needed.
Optional direct paste turn on "Paste to the app in front" in Settings and a picked clip pastes itself into whatever app you're using. Off by default; ClipBuddy asks for Accessibility permission only when you enable it, and copy-and-⌘V keeps working if you don't.

Pause capture

Stop recording new copies for a while 15 minutes, 30, an hour, 3 or 8 hours, or until you resume, from the menu bar or the picker. The menu-bar icon shows a pause badge while paused, so nothing you copy in the meantime is saved.

Rules & routine

Rules act the moment you copy clean tracking links, run a transform, extract just the email, domain or number, compress a copied image, pin, burn-after-paste, or file the clip under a label, matched on the app, type, length, or text (with search syntax: a | b, -exclude, "exact phrase").
Starter Rules a gallery of one-click presets: turn "file every screenshot under a Screenshots collection", "clean tracking links", "vault anything that looks like a secret" and more into a working rule in a single tap. Nothing is active until you add one.
Frequent a smart filter of the clips you re-copy most, and a floating Quick Palette that keeps your pinned and frequent clips one click away.
Save-as-snippet nudge copy the same text a few times and ClipBuddy offers to make it a snippet.

Screenshots & recordings, captured automatically

Every ⌘⇧3/4/5 screenshot lands in your history the moment you take it: no manual copying needed. You pick the folders once: watch as many as you like, not just the Desktop; nothing else on your Mac is accessed.
Text inside screenshots is searchable on-device recognition runs at capture time.
Screen recordings are captured too, with a real video-frame thumbnail; pasting drops the actual file.

Speaks your language

The whole app is translated into 16 languages every menu, setting, button and message, not just the marketing pages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Russian, Polish, Turkish and Ukrainian.
ClipBuddy follows your Mac's language automatically; you can also pick one in Settings.

Made for code

Syntax highlighting code clips are colored (keywords, strings, comments, numbers) right in the card and the ⌘Y preview, with the language auto-detected: Swift, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Rust, Go, Java, C++, shell, SQL, JSON, YAML, HTML, CSS.

Developer tools

CSV table viewer a copied CSV opens as a real table instead of a wall of commas.
Two-clip diff compare two clips side by side and see exactly what changed.
Generators UUID, Unix-time ↔ date, and URL parsing, available both in the picker and as one-tap transforms. Everything runs on-device.

Find any setting

A search box in Settings jumps straight to the row you want, and each row's explanation now lives behind a tidy ⓘ instead of a wall of text.

Faster & smoother

A big responsiveness pass: no background lag after launch, backup and restore run without freezing the window, and image-heavy scrolling stays smooth.

Picker, your way

Open at your mouse pointer a compact floating panel right where you're working (drag it anywhere), or keep the classic bottom drawer.
Multi-file copies grouped one card shows "N files" plus the actual filenames.

Snippets: keyword expansion and AI

Save reusable text as snippets with keywords, organized into collections, in a workspace of their own: ⌥⌘T opens it from any app.
Keyword expansion switch on "Expand keywords as you type" in Settings, Snippets, and typing a keyword such as ;addr in any app turns it into the snippet. It is off until you turn it on, and macOS asks for Input Monitoring and Accessibility first. What you type is only checked against your keywords, never saved or sent anywhere.
Or from the picker press ⌘⇧V, type the keyword, Enter. ClipBuddy fills the placeholders and puts the snippet on your clipboard, ready to paste with ⌘V.
Tokens {{date}}, {{time}}, {{clipboard}}, {{cursor}}, fill-in fields like {{fill:Name}}, other snippets and notes, UUIDs and date offsets, inserted from a token bar. Older single-brace snippets such as {date} keep working.
Fill-in fields ask for each value, with menus, optional sections and date pickers, before the text goes in.
Three kinds of snippet Text Expansion fills in its tokens; a Selection Prompt sends the copied text to Apple's on-device model with your instruction; a Chain runs several snippets in a row. Prompts and Chains need macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence (Pro).
Give any snippet its own keyboard shortcut, and import your snippets from TextExpander, aText and Raycast (Pro).
Free keeps up to 10 snippets; Pro has no limit.

Markdown notes

A Notes workspace beside your history: ⌥⌘N opens it from any app.
Markdown with a live preview tasks, tables, code, callouts, footnotes and images look right while you type. Tick tasks off in the reading view; double-click a line to edit it there, and Esc goes back to reading.
Organize tags, collections, favorites, pins and [[links]] between notes, with a graph of how they connect.
Daily notes can bring over yesterday's unfinished tasks, and you lay out what a new day starts with.
Version history compare a note with any saved version and restore it.
Your files keep notes as .md files in a folder you choose (Pro), and open Markdown files straight from Finder.
Free keeps up to 10 notes; Pro has no limit.

Templates

Nearly 5,000 ready-made notes and snippets in 83 categories meeting notes, support replies, journal prompts, review replies, code snippets and more. Browse them all on the template library.
23 arrive already filled in, like a habit tracker, a trip plan with a packing list, a grocery list and a workout log.
They ask for what they need fill-in fields, menus, optional sections and date pickers, including "three days from today". Make any template your own.

Quick actions & transforms

One-tap actions on detected colours, sums, phone numbers and emails; make a QR code, scan a QR/barcode out of an image, open a link, reveal in Finder, and Translate on-device on macOS 14.4+ between languages supported by Apple's Translation framework.
Colours, converted a copied colour shows as a swatch and copies back as HEX, RGB, HSL, CMYK, SwiftUI or Tailwind.
Timestamps convert to a readable date in one click, and screenshots can be translated on-device.
Fix spelling on any text clip with the on-device system dictionary.
Remove the background from an image clip (on-device, macOS 14+) and copy the cutout.
Transform any clip: case, camelCase, snake_case, trim, base64, URL-encode, JSON pretty/minify, hashes, sort & dedupe, or edit before you paste, and paste the result straight in.

Organize, multi-select, backup

Collections group clips into named folders and filter by them from the picker.
Related clips from any clip, jump to others with similar meaning.
Burn-after-paste arm a clip and it deletes itself (and scrubs the pasteboard) the moment it's pasted once.
Multi-select mark several items and copy them back as one, in order, with a separator you choose (newline, comma, space, tab).
Drag-out drag any clip to Finder: images and files drop as themselves, text drops as a real .txt.
Pinned clips and custom labels (with label hotkeys); backup & restore the whole history (encrypted, see above); usage stats; launch at login.

Vault: Touch ID for copied secrets

Pro 5

Turn on Detect & vault secrets and a recognized credential (such as an API key, card number, or password-shaped string) goes into the Vault instead of sitting in plain history. Detection is off by default, so ClipBuddy never silently changes how new copies are handled.
Touch ID (or your device password) every time you reveal or paste it; the value is copied out marked-concealed and clears itself from the clipboard after 60 seconds.
Choose what gets vaulted Settings lists every kind of secret ClipBuddy can watch for, each with its own switch: payment cards, bank accounts (IBAN), password-like text, API tokens and private keys. Turn off any you would rather keep in ordinary history, or turn detection off entirely. Rules can opt out per rule too.
Card wallet save your cards once; every field is encrypted and revealed per-field, behind Touch ID.
Encrypted on your Mac with keys that never leave it: vault items in a backup can only be read again on the same Mac. Search never sees them. When detection is enabled on the free tier, recognized secret-looking copies are simply never saved at all.

Privacy controls

Per-app capture blocklist tell ClipBuddy to never capture from chosen apps (your password manager, banking apps).
Clean tracking links strip utm_*, fbclid, gclid and friends from a copied URL automatically (opt-in).
Clear on lock wipe your clipboard history every time your Mac locks (pinned clips are kept). Off by default.

Emoji picker: ⌘⌥E

Press ⌘⌥E for a searchable picker of 2,300+ emoji (flags and skin tones included), generated on your Mac. Free for everyone.

Shortcuts & control

Configurable global shortcuts for the picker, emoji, undo, paste-stack and the slot base modifier, with conflict detection so two actions never fight over one combo.
Per-label hotkeys, and a resizable, size-adjustable picker.

Private & lightweight

Local-first your clipboard never leaves your Mac, no cloud, no account, no tracking. Even OCR, Translate, voice search and the AI actions run on your Mac.
Sensitive copies are handled for you copies a source app marks concealed (password managers, secure fields) are never saved at all. If you enable optional secret detection, recognized credentials go into the Touch ID Vault on Pro instead of your plain history.
No network access at all ClipBuddy ships without the outbound-network entitlement, so it cannot send anything anywhere. See the privacy policy.
No account, ever. Free for your last 10 clips, 10 notes and 10 snippets; Pro unlocks unlimited searchable history, notes and snippets. Eligible subscribers may receive a 7-day free trial, confirmed by Apple before purchase.
Built in Swift/AppKit: a tiny menu-bar app, no Electron.

Try it free. Upgrade when it earns it.

Free for your last 10 clips, with no account and no time limit. Your history stays on your Mac on every plan.

Download on the Mac App Store Compare plans

ClipBuddy for Mac features Every feature, shown working.

Every copy, saved and one keystroke away

Search that forgives typos and reads meaning

Find a screenshot by the words inside it

Edit before you paste

Every action for a clip, one key away

Reshape text without a scratch file

Paste Stack: collect several, paste them in order

Snippets that type themselves

Clipboard undo, for the copy you lost

Labels, themes and a picker that fits

Private by design

Capture & privacy

Notes that link up

Snippets, grown up

Diagrams, drawn on your Mac

Try it free. Upgrade when it earns it.