What Paste captures (and what it ignores)
Paste saves what you copy so nothing gets overwritten or lost, but how it captures depends on your device, and it deliberately skips passwords and other sensitive content.
What Paste saves on Mac
On Mac, Paste runs in the background and saves everything you copy: text, links, images, files, and colors. Each new copy is added to your Clipboard History automatically, so you can scroll back to anything you copied earlier.
For this to work, Paste needs to keep running. Turn on Run in background in Paste Settings → General so Paste stays active and keeps capturing after you close its window.
What Paste saves on iPhone and iPad
iOS does not let apps read the clipboard while they run in the background, so capture on iPhone works a little differently than on Mac.
On iPhone, a copy is captured when:
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You open Paste after copying something.
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You send it in through Paste's share-sheet extensions.
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You copy using the Paste Keyboard.
Because of this, copying several things quickly in another app keeps only the last one until you bring content into Paste. To capture as you go, send items to Paste through the extensions or the Paste Keyboard.
On iPad, keeping Paste visible — in Stage Manager, Split View, or Slide Over — lets it capture copies automatically, the way it does on Mac.
For more on the iPhone workflow, see Clipboard history on iPhone.
What Paste ignores
By default, Paste skips content that is not meant to be saved:
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Confidential content, such as passwords from your password manager.
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Transient content that apps mark as temporary and not meant to persist.
Paste skips passwords and sensitive data when it can detect them. Some password-manager browser extensions copy in a way Paste can't detect, so their passwords may still be saved. If passwords from an extension show up in your history, use your password manager's desktop app instead, or add the browser to Ignore Applications.
You control all of this in Paste Settings → Privacy, where you can also choose specific apps to skip entirely.
Why something you copied isn't showing up
If a copy didn't appear in Paste, one of these is usually the reason:
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You're on iPhone. The copy is captured only when you open Paste or send it in through an extension or the Paste Keyboard. Open Paste and try again.
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The app is excluded. Check Ignore Applications in Paste Settings → Privacy to see whether the source app is on the list.
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The content was treated as confidential or transient. Passwords and items apps mark as temporary are skipped by design.
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Paste isn't running. On Mac, make sure Run in background is on in Paste Settings → General.
Excluding an app only stops new copies from being saved. Anything you copied before adding the exclusion stays in your history — remove those items manually.
Things to know
When you paste something back out, Paste keeps its original formatting by default. You can strip the styles and paste an item as plain text instead — see Paste as plain text.
Everything Paste captures stays on your devices and, with sync on, in your private iCloud. To learn where those items live, see Where Paste stores your data.
If a copy still isn't captured after checking the points above, contact us.