An AI Clipboard Text Editor for Mac

An AI Clipboard Text Editor for Mac

Your clipboard is usually a dumb pipe: copy here, paste there. But most of the text you copy needs a small edit before it lands — a tighter version, a cleaner format, a translation, a summary. An AI clipboard text editor closes that gap. It lets you transform whatever you copied, in place, before you paste it.

This is what that looks like on macOS with ClipHistory, and why editing at the clipboard layer beats editing in the destination app.

What an AI clipboard text editor does

A normal clipboard manager remembers what you copied. An AI clipboard text editor goes further: it can change the text using a model, then hand you the result. ClipHistory does this with four transforms available on any clip:

• Summarize — condense long text to its essentials.
• Rewrite — fix tone, tighten wording, rephrase.
• Translate — convert text to another language.
• Clean — strip formatting, stray characters, and clutter.

You copy something, open ClipHistory with Cmd+Shift+V, pick a transform, and the edited text is ready to paste. The original stays in your history.

Why edit at the clipboard layer

It works in every app

Editing in the destination app means you're limited to whatever that app offers. The clipboard sits between every app, so a clipboard editor works the same in Mail, Slack, your code editor, a CMS, or a terminal. One tool, every surface.

It keeps the original

When you edit in place inside a document, the original is gone unless you undo. A clipboard editor keeps both — the source clip and the transformed result live in your history. Compare them, revert, or run another transform.

It chains

Real editing is rarely one step. Because every transform works on any clip, you can chain them:

1. Clean a messy paste to remove artifacts.
2. Summarize the cleaned text.
3. Rewrite the summary for tone.
4. Translate it for an international reader.

Four edits, all over the clipboard, none requiring a separate app.

Bring your own model

ClipHistory doesn't lock you to one AI. It supports five providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google, and a custom endpoint — and you supply your own API key. That means you choose the model behind every transform and pay the provider directly. Prefer a local model? Point the custom endpoint at it and your text never leaves your Mac.

History, pins, and boards

An editor needs somewhere to keep its work. ClipHistory holds 150 unpinned clips plus unlimited pinned ones. The transformed versions you want to keep get pinned to boards — grouped collections for a project, a client, or a recurring task. A research session can hold every summary and rewrite you produced, organized instead of buried.

For text you reuse verbatim, snippets give you saved, named entries you can recall instantly. And the paste stack lets you queue several clips and paste them in sequence — useful when filling a form or assembling a document from parts.

A day in the workflow

• Morning: paste a long spec, Clean it, Summarize it, pin the summary.
• Midday: draft a reply, Rewrite it for tone before sending.
• Afternoon: copy a message from a partner abroad, Translate it, Rewrite the response in their language.

Every one of these is a copy, a shortcut, and a transform. No window juggling.

Editing where the work already is

The reason a clipboard editor feels different from a dedicated writing app is that it meets you mid-task. You're not opening a tool to write — you're in the middle of replying, coding, or filing a ticket, and the text just needs one adjustment before it lands. Pulling that adjustment up to the clipboard layer means the edit happens in the gap between copy and paste, which is exactly where it belongs.

That framing also explains why the transforms are deliberately scoped. Summarize, rewrite, translate, and clean cover the edits people actually make to copied text dozens of times a day. They're not trying to replace a document editor; they're trying to fix the last ten percent before a paste.

Local by default

The text you edit is often private — drafts, internal notes, customer data. ClipHistory stores its history locally on your Mac with no cloud sync and no account. Transform requests go only to the provider you configured, and a custom local endpoint keeps everything on-device.

ClipHistory is signed and notarized by Apple, ships as a universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel, and runs on macOS 12 or later.

Get ClipHistory for macOS — $19.99, a one-time payment for a 12-month license (no auto-renewal). Signed and notarized by Apple, universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel, runs fully local on macOS 12+. Download ClipHistory.