Getting started
Search your clipboard history
One field searches clips, emoji and labels together, and it forgives a typo.
Pro⌘⇧V then type
What it does
Search is the whole point of a long history. ClipBuddy indexes your clips locally and matches on words, on meaning, and on facts about the clip such as the app it came from and the day you copied it.
Universal search means one query surfaces matching clips, emoji and labels together, instead of making you pick a tab first.
The chips
A filter chip is a visible, removable pill in the search field. That is deliberate: you can always read the search you are running.
- app: the app you copied from
- type: text, image, link, file, code, JSON
- dates:
after:,before:,today,7d - has: link, email, phone, number, code
Chips in the same category are combined with OR, chips from different categories with AND. So app:Chrome plus 7d means Chrome, in the last week.
Voice search
Tap the mic in the search bar and say what you are looking for. Transcription happens on your Mac with Apple’s on-device speech, and the microphone is live only while you dictate. On Macs without on-device speech the mic is hidden rather than sent to a server.
Sorting and jumping back
A sort menu offers newest, oldest, most copied and recently used. From any result you can choose Show in timeline to land on the moment you copied it and see what you were working on either side of it.
Tips
- Save the searches you run daily. A saved search becomes a chip in the picker, which is faster than retyping filters.
- If a search returns too much, add
-wordfor the term that is polluting the results rather than making the query longer.
Find a clip you copied days ago
- 1 Open the picker and type
Press ⌘⇧V and type any words you remember. Matches are highlighted in every result so you can see why something matched.
- 2 Narrow it with a chip
Pick a filter and it drops a removable pill into the search bar: app:, type:, a date such as after: or 7d, or has:link, has:email, has:phone, has:number, has:code.
- 3 Sharpen the words
Wrap an exact phrase in "quotes", drop a result set with -word, or accept either term with a|b. Same-category chips are combined with OR, different ones with AND.
- 4 Keep the search
Save a query you repeat and it becomes a smart folder: a live chip in the picker you can reopen any time.
Frequently asked questions
What is search by meaning?
Ask for "that wifi password" or "the address" and ClipBuddy can find the clip even when those exact words are not in it. It runs on Apple's on-device language model, so nothing leaves your Mac.
Can I type a question instead of filters?
Yes. Type something like "screenshots from Chrome last week" and ClipBuddy turns it into ordinary chips you can see and edit, so you always know what it searched for. This needs macOS 26.
Does a misspelled search still work?
Yes. Search is typo tolerant, so searching recieve still finds the clip that says receive.
