At a glance
- Every copy, every app: text, rich text, links, images, colours and files, each item keeping its own type.
- Nothing expires by default: retention by age or by storage size is available, and off until you set it.
- One shortcut: hold ⌥⌘V, step through the list newest first, release to paste.
- Search reaches everything: item text, titles, links, the source app, snippet bodies, words inside images.
- macOS 14 Sonoma and later: the history stays on the Mac, with no account and no sync.
How the history holds up
Text recognised inside a screenshot is indexed next to the picture, so a word you only ever saw in an image becomes an ordinary search term. Recognition happens in the background, off the copy path, so nothing stalls when you press ⌘C.
Image bytes live in a de-duplicated store outside the database. Copy the same screenshot ten times and it costs one file.
Images are stored as real image data. A screenshot from last week still pastes as a screenshot after a reboot, not as a dead pointer to a file that moved.
The popup and the History window read different things. The popup holds a small buffer of recent items for speed. The History window pages straight from the local database, with filters for content type, date range and source app, so it opens fast after tens of thousands of copies. More in search and OCR.
Items can change on the way out. The same popup carries the transforms. Paste a messy block as plain text, a HEX value as RGB, raw JSON pretty-printed, or strip the em dashes and invisible characters that mark text as AI-written. All of it runs on your Mac, in whatever app has focus. Klipto began on Maccy's open-source core and has gone its own way since, and this layer is most of the distance. For a one-off, try it free in your browser.
What macOS gives you on its own
macOS 26 Tahoe added a genuine clipboard history, reached through Spotlight with ⌘Space then ⌘4. It survives a reboot, so this is real storage. It also expires: 8 hours by default, 7 days at the maximum. And it needs macOS 26, which leaves out every Mac on Sonoma or Sequoia. On those, Edit then Show Clipboard in Finder shows the single current item.
| macOS Spotlight history (26 Tahoe) | Klipto | |
|---|---|---|
| Items kept | Many, expires 8h to 7 days | Unlimited, no expiry by default |
| macOS needed | 26 and later | 14 Sonoma and later |
| Content types | Text, files, images | Text, rich text, links, images, colours, files |
| Search | Within its own window | Whole history, plus words inside images |
| Filters | None | Content type, date range, source app |
| Where it lives | On-device | On-device |
| Paste flow | Spotlight, then Enter | Hold ⌥⌘V, release |
Private by design
Your history stays on the Mac. No account, no sign-in, no cloud sync, and the app touches the network only to check for updates.
That matters because clipboards collect passwords, card numbers and private messages. Apple's own Tahoe history warns that sensitive information may show up in it. That is honest of them, and true of every clipboard history including mine. Klipto keeps the record local, where you can wipe all of it in one action or trim it by age or size. A setting in Settings, General excludes password-manager copies.