A native macOS clipboard history manager. Lives in the menu bar, tracks everything you copy, and lets you quickly paste previous entries with a global hotkey.
- Global hotkey — Cmd+Shift+V opens a floating panel
- Split-view UI — scrollable entry list on the left, full preview on the right
- Search — filter clipboard history by text content
- Keyboard navigation — arrow keys to browse, Enter to paste, Escape to dismiss
- Text & image support — captures both plain text and images
- Non-activating panel — doesn't steal focus from your current app
- Paste-back — selected entry is written to the pasteboard and pasted into the frontmost app automatically
- Deduplication — re-copying the same text moves it to the top instead of creating a duplicate
- 100 entry cap — oldest entries are trimmed automatically
- In-memory only — history is cleared when the app quits
- macOS 13+
- Swift 5.9+
make run
This builds a release binary, packages it into Clippy.app, and launches it. To install to /Applications:
make install
For development you can also use swift run Clippy directly, but the app bundle is needed for macOS to attribute permissions to Clippy rather than your terminal.
On first launch, macOS will prompt for Accessibility access (needed for the global hotkey and paste simulation). Grant it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
- Launch Clippy — a paperclip icon appears in the menu bar
- Copy text or images as usual — they appear in Clippy's history
- Press Cmd+Shift+V to open the clipboard panel
- Use ↑/↓ arrow keys or click to select an entry
- Press Enter or double-click to paste the selected entry
- Press Escape to dismiss the panel
Right-click the menu bar icon to clear history or quit.