Which AI providers does ClipHistory support?

Five: Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google, and a custom endpoint. You supply your own API key and requests go directly to that provider.

Do I need a ClipHistory account to use the AI features?

No. There is no account and no cloud. The AI features use your own API key, and all clipboard data stays local on your Mac.

What can the AI transforms do?

Summarize long text, rewrite for grammar and tone, translate into other languages, and clean text down to plain formatting. Each produces a new clip.

Does the clipboard history work without internet?

Yes. History, search, snippets, boards, and the paste stack all work offline. Only the AI transforms need a connection to your provider.

How many clips does it keep?

150 unpinned clips in rolling history, plus unlimited pinned clips that never roll off.

AI Clipboard Assistant to Rewrite & Translate Mac

An AI Clipboard Assistant to Rewrite and Translate on Mac

Most clipboard managers do one thing: they remember what you copied. That is useful, but it leaves the actual work — rewriting, translating, cleaning up, summarizing — to you and a pile of other apps. ClipHistory adds an AI layer directly to the clipboard, so the text you just copied can be transformed before you paste it.

This post walks through what an AI clipboard assistant actually does, how ClipHistory implements it, and where it fits in a real workday.

What "AI clipboard assistant" means here

It is not a chatbot bolted onto a copy buffer. It is a focused set of transforms you can run on any clip:

Summarize — turn a long block into its key points.
Rewrite — fix grammar, tighten phrasing, or change tone.
Translate — convert text into another language.
Clean — strip formatting down to plain text and remove clutter.

Each one operates on a clip in your history and produces a new clip with the result. You trigger them from the ClipHistory window, which you open with Cmd+Shift+V.

The architecture that matters: your key, your provider, local data

The single most important design decision in ClipHistory is that it is bring-your-own-key. You connect one of five providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google, or a custom endpoint — and AI requests go straight from your Mac to that provider.

What this means in practice:

No ClipHistory cloud. Your clipboard data is stored locally on your Mac.
No account. You do not sign up; there is nothing to log into.
No markup on AI usage. You pay your provider directly at their rates.
Provider choice. If you already pay for one of these APIs, you reuse that key. If you self-host a model, the custom endpoint points to it.

For people who copy sensitive material — code, contracts, customer data — the local-first model is the difference between a tool you can use at work and one you cannot.

A day with the assistant

Here is how the transforms stack up in normal use.

Morning: triage

A long email thread lands in your inbox. Copy it, hit Cmd+Shift+V, run Summarize. You get the gist in a few bullets without reading every reply. Pin the summary if you will reference it in a meeting later — pinned clips are unlimited and never roll off.

Midday: writing

You draft a reply but it is rough. Copy it, Rewrite for grammar and tone, paste it back. If the recipient speaks another language, chain Translate after the rewrite so the final text reads naturally in their language.

Afternoon: cleanup

You are assembling a document from a dozen sources. Each paste brings formatting baggage. Run Clean on each clip, queue them in the paste stack, and drop them in order. The document stays consistent because every fragment was normalized first.

Boards and snippets: organizing what the AI produces

Transforms create clips; boards organize them. A board is a named collection where you can group related clips — for instance, all the translated strings for one project, or every summary from one research session.

For text you reuse verbatim, snippets are the right home. A snippet does not need an AI call; it is a saved block you paste instantly. The practical split: use AI transforms for fresh, one-off text, and snippets for boilerplate you produce once and reuse forever.

How it compares to copying into a chatbot

You could paste into a chatbot app for each of these tasks. The friction adds up: switch apps, paste, wait, copy the answer, switch back, paste again. And your clipboard history is somewhere else entirely.

ClipHistory keeps the whole loop in one place. The text is already in your history, the transform is one menu away, and the result lands back in the same history ready to paste. No app-switching tax, and your 150 recent clips (plus unlimited pinned ones) are all searchable.

Capacity and limits, stated plainly

ClipHistory keeps 150 unpinned clips in rolling history.
Pinned clips are unlimited — pin anything you want to keep permanently.
AI transforms depend on your provider's API being reachable; everything else (history, search, snippets, boards, paste stack) works offline.

Requirements

ClipHistory is a universal binary for macOS 12 and later — native on Apple Silicon and Intel — and is signed and notarized by Apple, so it installs without Gatekeeper warnings. You add one API key in settings and the full assistant is available on every clip.

Get ClipHistory for macOS — $19.99, a one-time payment for a 12-month license (no auto-renewal). Download ClipHistory and keep your clipboard local, searchable, and AI-ready.