What does the Clean transform fix?

Clean normalizes punctuation and spacing: inconsistent spaces, mismatched quotes, stray line breaks from PDFs, and invisible characters, so the text reads correctly.

Does it work on text from any app?

Yes. Clean works on whatever you copy, so it fixes punctuation in text from PDFs, web pages, chat apps, editors, and anywhere else.

Is my text sent to a server?

Only the clip you choose to Clean is sent to the AI provider you connect with your own API key. Everything else stays local; there is no cloud or account.

What does ClipHistory cost?

A one-time $19.99 with a 12-month license and no auto-renewal. Clean uses your own API key, billed by your provider.

Fix Punctuation in Any Text With a Mac App

Text you copy from the wild is rarely clean. Double spaces after periods, missing commas, mismatched quotes, stray line breaks from a PDF. Fixing punctuation by hand is tedious, and most "grammar" tools are browser extensions tied to specific sites. ClipHistory fixes punctuation at the clipboard, so it works on text from any Mac app.

Clean from the clipboard

ClipHistory tracks what you copy and opens with the global shortcut Cmd+Shift+V. Any clip can be run through an AI transform, and the one for punctuation is Clean.

Copy the messy text from any source.
Press Cmd+Shift+V.
Select the clip and choose Clean.
Paste the corrected text.

Clean normalizes punctuation and spacing: it fixes inconsistent spaces, straightens or standardizes quotes, removes stray characters, and tidies line breaks so the text reads correctly.

What Clean handles well

Extra or missing spaces around punctuation
Smart-quote and straight-quote inconsistencies
Stray line breaks copied out of PDFs
Invisible or non-breaking characters

It is most useful right after pasting from a PDF, a chat app, or a web page, where formatting damage is common.

Your own API key

Clean runs through the AI provider you connect with your own API key. ClipHistory supports five: Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google, or a custom endpoint. There is no hosted service and no per-fix charge from ClipHistory; you pay your provider for usage. Because punctuation cleanup is a light task, even an inexpensive model usually handles it well.

Picking a cheap model for cleanup

Cleanup is the cheapest transform to run because it is short and mechanical. If you have several models configured for your provider, point Clean at the smallest one. The result for spacing and quotes is effectively identical to a larger model, and the cost per fix drops to a rounding error. Save the stronger models for transforms where judgment matters, like Rewrite. Since you control the configured model and pay per use on your own key, this kind of tuning is entirely in your hands.

Everything stays local

ClipHistory keeps your clips and history on your Mac. No cloud, no account. The only thing transmitted is the clip you explicitly run through Clean, sent to your configured provider. Text you never transform is never sent, which matters when you are cleaning up a private note or a draft you have not published.

A before-and-after

Copy a sentence out of a PDF and you often get something like:

"The report is due Friday .Please review the attached file ,thanks ."

The spacing is wrong in several places and the commas are misplaced. Run Clean and you get:

"The report is due Friday. Please review the attached file, thanks."

Same words, correct punctuation, ready to paste into an email without manual fiddling.

Where messy punctuation comes from

Knowing the source helps you anticipate when Clean is worth running:

PDFs insert line breaks at the end of every visual line and sometimes double-space.
Chat and rich-text apps swap straight quotes for curly ones and add non-breaking spaces.
Web pages carry hidden formatting characters and inconsistent spacing.
Auto-correct on other devices leaves quirks when text travels between them.

Any time text crosses one of these boundaries, Clean is a quick way to reset it to plain, correct prose.

Clean vs. find-and-replace

You can fix some of this with find-and-replace, but it is brittle: you fix double spaces, then notice the quotes, then a stray tab. Clean handles the whole class of issues in one pass and adapts to whatever is actually wrong with the clip, rather than the one pattern you remembered to search for. For one-off cleanups across many different sources, that is far less work.

Combine and reuse

Chain transforms: Clean after Translate or Rewrite to tidy the output.
Save snippets: if you regularly fix the same boilerplate, save the cleaned version as a snippet and group it on a board.
Keep the original: ClipHistory holds 150 unpinned clips and unlimited pinned ones, so pin the source if you want to compare before and after.
Use the paste stack: clean several clips and queue them with the paste stack to drop them into a document in order.

Why fix punctuation at the clipboard

Browser grammar tools only help inside the browser. Fixing punctuation at the clipboard means the correction is available between copy and paste, in any app, behind a single shortcut. The messy text goes in, the clean text comes out, and nothing leaves your Mac unless you choose to run the transform. ClipHistory is a universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel, runs on macOS 12 or later, and is signed and notarized by Apple.

Ready to put AI one keystroke away? Get ClipHistory for macOS for a one-time $19.99 (12-month license, no auto-renewal). Signed and notarized by Apple, universal binary, everything stays on your Mac.