Does ClipHistory work on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs?

Yes. It's a universal binary, so it runs natively on both architectures with no Rosetta needed. It requires macOS 12 or later.

Do I need to create an account to download it?

No. ClipHistory has no account and no cloud sync. After installing, you only add an API key from your own AI provider to enable the transforms.

Will macOS block the app on install?

No. The app is signed and notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper opens it without security warnings. You'll grant accessibility permission so the shortcut and pasting work.

What AI features are included?

Summarize, rewrite, translate, and clean, all running on your clipboard through the provider you connect (Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google, or custom).

Is it a subscription?

No. It's a one-time $19.99 purchase with a 12-month license and no auto-renewal. You only pay your AI provider for token usage separately.

Download an AI Text Tool for Mac

Most AI text tools want you in a browser tab and an account. You paste in, wait, copy out, and switch back to whatever you were doing. For one-off questions that's fine. For the dozen small text fixes you do every day, the round trip is the bottleneck.

ClipHistory is an AI text tool built into your clipboard. The text you want to transform is usually already copied; you just run the transform and paste. This guide covers what it does, how it stays private, and how to install it.

What you get

ClipHistory is an AI-powered clipboard manager for macOS. The clipboard part keeps your recent copies organized; the AI part transforms them on demand. The transforms:

Summarize — long text to its key points.
Rewrite — fix grammar or change tone while keeping meaning.
Translate — convert text to another language.
Clean — strip formatting, stray characters, and broken line breaks.

All four act on whatever is on your clipboard and replace it with the result, ready to paste into any app.

Bring your own AI provider

Instead of bundling one model and marking up the cost, ClipHistory lets you connect your own provider with your own API key. Supported providers:

Anthropic
OpenAI
DeepSeek
Google
A custom endpoint

You pick the model, you pay the provider directly for tokens, and you can switch providers whenever you want. There is no ClipHistory subscription layered on top of your AI usage.

Everything stays local

This is the part that separates ClipHistory from web-based tools. There is no account, no login, and no cloud sync. Your clipboard history lives on your Mac: the 150 most recent unpinned clips plus any number of pinned clips. The only data that ever leaves your machine is the specific text you choose to send to your AI provider for a transform.

For people handling client data, internal docs, or anything under an NDA, that boundary is the whole point. You're not uploading your clipboard to a service; you're keeping it on disk and selectively calling an API you already trust.

The features beyond AI

A clipboard manager you'll actually live in needs more than transforms:

History — your last 150 unpinned clips, searchable, recoverable.
Pinned clips — unlimited, never pushed out of history.
Snippets — reusable text blocks for signatures, boilerplate, and commands.
Boards — group related clips for a project or task.
Paste stack — queue several clips and paste them in order without re-copying.

Together these mean the AI transforms aren't a gimmick bolted onto a basic tool; they sit inside a clipboard manager you can run your whole day from.

How to download and install

Go to the download page and get the latest build.
Open the app. Because it's signed and notarized by Apple, Gatekeeper lets it run without security warnings.
Grant the accessibility permission macOS asks for so the global shortcut and pasting work.
Open settings, add your AI provider's API key, and choose a default model.
Press Cmd+Shift+V anywhere to open ClipHistory.

That's the full setup. The shortcut works system-wide, so the tool is one keystroke away in every app.

A typical day with it

Concretely, here's how the tool shows up in real work. You copy a long Slack thread and summarize it before replying. You paste a paragraph from a PDF, clean it, then simplify it for a report. You draft a reply in fragments and expand it into prose. You copy a customer message in another language, translate it to read, then translate your answer back. None of these send you to a browser, and none of them require an account. The clipboard is the surface; the transforms are the verbs.

Over a week, the small saved trips add up more than any single transform does. That's the case for building AI into the clipboard rather than a separate app: the friction you remove is the friction you'd otherwise hit dozens of times a day.

How transforms compose

The transforms aren't isolated buttons. Because each one acts on the current clipboard and replaces it, you can chain them: clean then summarize, summarize then translate, translate then rewrite for tone. You stay on your clipboard the whole time, so a two- or three-step pipeline costs you no app switching.

System requirements

ClipHistory is a universal binary, so it runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs with no Rosetta workaround. It requires macOS 12 (Monterey) or later. The signed-and-notarized build means no "unidentified developer" prompts.

Pricing

ClipHistory is a one-time purchase of $19.99. That includes a 12-month license, and there is no auto-renewal, so you won't get billed again unless you choose to. Compared to AI text tools that charge monthly on top of token costs, you pay once for the app and then only for your own API usage.

Get ClipHistory for macOS

A local AI text tool that lives in your clipboard, uses your own API key, and never asks you to make an account. Download ClipHistory for macOS ($19.99).