The best clipboard manager for Mac (2026)

By default, your Mac remembers only the last thing you copied. Copy a link, then copy a line of code, and the link is gone — there's no going back to it. (macOS 26 Tahoe added a basic, time-limited clipboard history in Spotlight, but it's off by default and Mac-only — more on that below.) A clipboard manager fixes this properly: it keeps a lasting history of everything you copy so you can find it again, reuse it, and organize the bits you paste all the time.

The apps below all do that core job; they differ on how well they sync across your devices, organize what you reuse, and search your history. But there's one point most "best clipboard manager" lists skip. Your clipboard is one of the most sensitive things on your Mac — over a day it holds passwords, two-factor codes, private messages, even card numbers — and a clipboard manager records that stream by design. So alongside features, weigh which app you can trust to hold all that, and which will still be maintained next year. That matters more lately: AI has made it easy to spin up an app in a weekend, App Store submissions jumped through 2025 and 2026, and Apple has been tightening review to keep low-quality ones out (AppleInsider, MacRumors). So this guide covers only established managers with proven track records, weighs trust and upkeep next to features, and is upfront about where each falls short. One of them, Paste, is ours — we'll flag that and let the facts carry it.

We verified every price, platform, and feature against each app's own site, App Store listing, or public release history in June 2026. Apps change — double-check the current details before you buy.

What matters most in a clipboard manager

Not every point below matters to everyone — but don't skip the first two: for something that quietly records everything you copy, they're the easiest to overlook and the most expensive to get wrong.

• Trust & privacy — your clipboard sees passwords and private notes. A good manager ignores fields marked as passwords by password managers, lets you exclude specific apps, and keeps your data on your Mac or in your own private cloud — not on someone else's servers. This is the load-bearing one.
• Active development — an app that's stopped shipping updates stops getting security and macOS-compatibility fixes. For something that quietly records everything you copy, "still actively maintained" isn't a nice-to-have — it's a safety requirement.
• Cross-device sync — does your history follow you from your Mac to your iPhone and iPad, or live on one machine? This is the biggest dividing line between the apps below.
• Organization — can you pin or group the things you reuse (templates, links, snippets) instead of scrolling the whole history?
• Search — finding the thing you copied last Tuesday is the whole point. Look for fast search, filters, and text recognition inside images.
• Formats — text is table stakes. Also worth checking: rich text, images, files, and the option to paste as plain text.
• Price — free, one-time purchase, or subscription. All three exist below.
• Native feel — a clipboard manager is something you'll touch dozens of times a day. It should feel fast and at home on macOS.

The contenders

macOS Tahoe Spotlight Clipboard History

Start with what's already on your Mac. As of macOS 26 Tahoe, macOS finally has its own clipboard history, built into Spotlight — press ⌘-Space, then ⌘-4 to see what you've copied recently. It's free, already there, and fine for grabbing something you copied a few minutes ago.

macOS Tahoe's built-in clipboard history shown in Spotlight — the plain list of recently copied items that appears after pressing ⌘-Space then ⌘-4

• Best for: people on macOS Tahoe who occasionally need the last few things they copied and don't want to install anything.
• Trade-offs: it's bare-bones, and you have to opt in. It's off by default (turn it on in System Settings → Spotlight → "Results from Clipboard"); it's Mac-only, with no sync to your iPhone or iPad; and it's temporary by design — items are cleared after a window you pick (30 minutes, 8 hours, or at most 7 days), so it's not a lasting archive. There are no pinboards or organization, just a recent list — and none of this exists on macOS 15 Sequoia or earlier.
• Price: free (built into macOS 26 Tahoe). Platform: Mac only (macOS 26 or later).

If you're on Tahoe and your needs are light, it may be all you want. The moment you need your history to stick around, stay organized, or show up on your iPhone, that's what the dedicated apps below are for.

Maccy — minimal and lightweight

Maccy is a free, open-source clipboard manager that does one thing and does it well: it keeps your copy history and gives you fast, keyboard-first access to it. It's lightweight, native, respects password-manager clearing, and the source is on GitHub under an MIT license — so anyone can inspect exactly what it does with your data. It's also genuinely well looked after, with regular releases through 2025.

• Best for: anyone who wants a reliable, free clipboard history on a single Mac.
• Trade-offs: deliberately minimal and text-focused — no sync to your iPhone or iPad, and no pinboards-style organization beyond simple pinning. That's a design choice, not neglect, but it caps how far Maccy can take you.
• Price: free and open source from GitHub or Homebrew; the Mac App Store also lists a paid $9.99 "support the developer" build with the same features. Platform: Mac only (macOS 14 Sonoma or later).

If you just want your Mac to stop forgetting your last copy and you never need it on your phone, Maccy is an easy recommendation.

Flycut — free and open source, but no longer maintained

Flycut is a free, open-source option (MIT-licensed), originally built for developers who copy and paste plain-text snippets all day. It still works, and the code being open is a point in its favor.

• Best for: developers who want a free, bare-bones plain-text buffer and don't mind unmaintained software.
• Trade-offs: development has effectively stopped — the last release was back in 2020, with only minor documentation tweaks since. For an app that records your clipboard, an abandoned project is a real caveat: no security or macOS-compatibility fixes coming. There's a separate iOS app, but clips live locally on each device rather than syncing.
• Price: free (open source). Platform: Mac (with a separate, also-dormant iOS app).

Pastebot — deep Mac-only power tool, gone quiet

Pastebot from Tapbots is a long-standing favorite for clipboard power users who live on one Mac. Its standout feature is filters — reusable transformations (strip formatting, find-and-replace, change case) you apply as you paste — plus custom pasteboards, sequential paste, and search by content, app, date, or type.

• Best for: power users who want to clean up and transform text as they paste, on a Mac.
• Trade-offs: Mac-only — it syncs between Macs via iCloud and works with Apple's Universal Clipboard, but there's no Pastebot app for iPhone or iPad. And it has gone quiet: the last update shipped in 2024, and it still lists macOS 10.14 as its minimum. It's a capable app, but the slow cadence is worth weighing for something you'll trust with sensitive data.
• Price: $12.99, one-time. Platform: Mac only (macOS 10.14 or later).

Raycast — clipboard history inside a launcher

Raycast is an actively developed app launcher with a built-in clipboard history. If you already use Raycast to launch apps and run commands, its history is a natural add-on: it handles text, images, colors, and links, and lets you pin entries.

• Best for: people who already use Raycast as their launcher and want history in the same window.
• Trade-offs: the free tier keeps clipboard history for 3 months; longer retention (6 months, a year, or unlimited) needs Raycast Pro. And the history stays on your desktop — it doesn't sync to your iPhone or iPad (mobile sync has been announced but isn't shipped).
• Price: free; Raycast Pro from $8/month (billed annually) for longer retention and other Pro features. Platform: Mac (also on Windows).

Alfred — clipboard history for the Alfred crowd

Alfred is the long-standing, still-maintained Mac launcher and automation tool. Clipboard history is part of its paid Powerpack — it saves text, images, and file links, and pairs well with Alfred's snippets and workflows.

• Best for: Alfred power users who want history alongside their workflows.
• Trade-offs: clipboard history requires the paid Powerpack; it's Mac-only and doesn't sync your clipboard across devices. (Alfred can sync your settings between Macs via a shared folder, but its own docs say clipboard history is explicitly excluded from that — it's a different thing.)
• Price: Powerpack from about $45 (£34), one-time — a roughly $78 (£59) "Mega Supporter" option adds lifetime upgrades. (Alfred bills in GBP, so the dollar figure shifts with the exchange rate.) Platform: Mac only.

Paste — trustworthy, maintained, and synced across your devices

Paste is ours, so treat this as the biased entry — but it's the only app here that does the two hardest things at once: it keeps a searchable history and syncs it across your Mac, iPhone, and iPad, without asking you to give up trust or active upkeep. It's been on the market since 2015 — around a decade — and it's actively developed, with frequent updates (the latest added Handoff between iPhone and Mac in June 2026); Apple has repeatedly featured it on the App Store (Find the Perfect Clipboard Manager). It's private by design: your history stays on your device and in your own private iCloud, never on our servers, and you can exclude apps that handle sensitive data (what Paste captures).

On top of that foundation, it does what the others can't all at once: the link you copied on your laptop an hour ago is right there on your phone. You organize the things you reuse into pinboards, find anything fast with Power Search (including text recognized inside images), and paste as plain text when you need to — and it's designed to feel native on every Apple device.

Paste on a Mac — the clipboard history bar across the bottom of the screen filled with copied items (text, links, images), with a pinboard of saved snippets to one side

• Best for: anyone who copies and pastes across a Mac and an iPhone or iPad and wants it trustworthy, organized, searchable, and in sync.
• Trade-offs: it's currently Apple-only — Mac, iPhone, and iPad — with no Windows or Android version yet, though we're exploring other platforms.
• Price: free to try on all your devices for a week, then $29.99/year ($2.49/month), or $3.99/month, or $89.99 once for a lifetime license; team plans are available too. Platform: Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Comparison at a glance

Getting started with Paste

If the trustworthy, cross-device, organized clipboard is what you're after, the best way to know is to try it. Paste is free to try on all your devices for a week — Mac, iPhone, and iPad — so you can feel how it fits your day before you decide:

The same Paste clipboard history shown on a Mac, an iPhone, and an iPad side by side, in sync through your private iCloud

• Install it from the App Store (it's also on Setapp).
• Copy as you normally would — Paste keeps the history and syncs it across your Mac, iPhone, and iPad through your private iCloud.
• Organize what you reuse into pinboards, and find anything with Power Search.

See plans and pricing, or read how copy and paste works across your Apple devices.

Frequently asked questions

Does macOS have a built-in clipboard manager?

Sort of, and only recently. For years macOS kept just the most recent thing you copied — copy something new and the previous item was gone. macOS 26 Tahoe added a basic clipboard history inside Spotlight (press ⌘-Space, then ⌘-4), but it's deliberately limited: it's off by default, it's Mac-only with no sync to your iPhone or iPad, and it keeps items only for a set window — 30 minutes, 8 hours, or at most 7 days — after which they're cleared. A dedicated clipboard manager adds what that leaves out: a lasting, searchable, organized history that doesn't expire and can follow you across devices.

Can you trust a clipboard manager with passwords and private data?

You can, but only if you choose carefully — and trust should be the first thing you weigh, not the last. Your clipboard regularly holds passwords, codes, and private text, so prefer a manager that ignores fields marked as passwords by password managers, lets you exclude specific apps, and keeps your history on your Mac or in your own private cloud rather than on someone else's servers. Just as important: pick one that's still actively developed, so it keeps getting security and macOS fixes. Paste, for example, keeps your history in your private iCloud (never on our servers), lets you exclude sensitive apps, and is actively maintained — see what Paste captures.

Is Paste free?

Paste is free to try for a week across all your devices — Mac, iPhone, and iPad — with no commitment. After the trial it's a subscription ($3.99/month or $29.99/year) or a one-time $89.99 lifetime purchase, and every plan covers all your Apple devices. See plans and pricing for the current details.

Which clipboard manager syncs to iPhone and iPad?

This is where most Mac clipboard managers stop — they're Mac-only, or sync only between Macs. Paste is built around it: your clipboard history syncs across your Mac, iPhone, and iPad through your private iCloud, so you can copy on one device and paste on another. (Apple's own Universal Clipboard hands off your last copy between devices, but it doesn't keep a history.)