Privacy and control
Privacy controls you can turn on
Five switches that decide what is captured, what is kept, and who can see it.
What it does
Five independent controls, each answering a different question.
- Per-app blocklist: never capture from these apps.
- Pause capture: stop recording for a set time, then resume automatically.
- Clear on lock: wipe history when the Mac locks, keeping pinned clips.
- Clean tracking links: strip
utm_*,fbclid,gclidand friends from copied URLs. - Hide while screen sharing: keep ClipBuddy windows out of shares, recordings and screenshots.
The baseline you do not configure
ClipBuddy ships without the outbound network entitlement, so it cannot send your clips anywhere even if it wanted to. Copies marked concealed by their source app are never saved. Those two facts hold regardless of which switches you set.
Tips
- Pause capture before a screen share or a pairing session, and let it resume itself. Quitting the app is the blunt version.
- Clear on lock suits shared and travelling machines. On a personal desktop it mostly costs you your history.
Lock down what gets captured
- 1 Blocklist the apps that matter
Add your password manager and banking apps to the per-app capture blocklist. ClipBuddy never captures from an app on that list.
- 2 Pause when you need to
Pause capture for 15 or 30 minutes, 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 it is paused.
- 3 Clear on lock
Turn on Clear on lock to wipe your history every time your Mac locks. Pinned clips are kept. It is off by default.
- 4 Hide from screen shares
One switch keeps every ClipBuddy window out of screen shares, recordings and screenshots, including Zoom, Meet, Teams, QuickTime, OBS and ⌘⇧4, while it stays visible on your own screen.
Frequently asked questions
Are copies from password managers saved?
No. Copies an app marks concealed, which is what password managers and secure fields do, are never saved at all. The blocklist covers apps that do not mark their copies.
How does hiding from screen shares work?
It uses the same window-server flag password managers use, so there is no permission prompt and no extra entitlement. It is free for everyone and off by default.
What is the honest limit of screen-share hiding?
A camera pointed at your screen still sees what your screen shows. It hides ClipBuddy from capture APIs, not from physics.
