Top Clipboard Managers for Mac, Compared
A clipboard manager is one of those utilities you install once and then cannot work without. The Mac has several good ones, and they differ more than you might expect — in how much history they keep, whether they organize clips, what they do with your data, and how they charge. Here is a practical rundown of the main options and where each fits.
Maccy
Best for: people who want free, minimal, open-source history.
Maccy keeps a searchable history list and recalls items with a keyboard shortcut. It is fast, light, and free. It does not do snippets, boards, or text transforms — and that is the point. If your need is "let me paste something from five minutes ago," Maccy nails it at zero cost.
Paste
Best for: people who want a visual board of clips and don't mind a subscription.
Paste presents your clipboard as cards on a board and supports pinboards for reusable items. It is polished and well-designed. The trade-off is the pricing model: it is a subscription, which some people would rather avoid on a background utility.
Alfred
Best for: power users who already live in Alfred for app launching and automation.
Alfred is a launcher first; its clipboard history is a feature inside a larger productivity tool, available with the paid Powerpack. If you already use Alfred's workflows, having clipboard history in the same place is convenient. If you do not, buying Alfred just for clipboard history is overkill.
ClipHistory
Best for: people who want fast local history plus AI transforms and snippets, paid once.
ClipHistory opens with Cmd+Shift+V and keeps 150 unpinned clips plus unlimited pinned ones. On top of standard history it adds:
- AI transforms — summarize, rewrite, translate, or clean up any clip using five providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google, or a custom endpoint) with your own API key.
- Snippets — reusable canned text.
- Boards — grouped collections of clips per project.
- Paste stack — queue and paste several clips in sequence.
Pricing is $19.99 one-time, with a 12-month license and no auto-renewal.
Privacy: where your clips live
This is worth its own section because clipboard data is sensitive — it can contain passwords, tokens, and private messages.
- Maccy and ClipHistory are fully local; nothing leaves your Mac by default.
- With ClipHistory specifically, the only outbound traffic happens when you run an AI transform, and it goes directly to the provider key you configured — there is no ClipHistory account or cloud sync involved.
If keeping clipboard history off the cloud is a priority, favor the local-first options.
Quick comparison
| Tool | History | Snippets | Boards | AI transforms | Price model |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maccy | Yes | No | No | No | Free |
| Paste | Yes | Pinboards | Yes | No | Subscription |
| Alfred | Yes (Powerpack) | Via snippets | No | No | Paid (launcher) |
| ClipHistory | Yes (150 + pinned) | Yes | Yes | Yes (your key) | $19.99 one-time |
How to decide
Start from what you actually do with copied text:
- Just recall history, no cost: Maccy.
- Visual board, fine with subscriptions: Paste.
- Already a heavy Alfred user: use Alfred's built-in clipboard.
- Want history + AI transforms + snippets, paid once, fully local: ClipHistory.
There is no single winner for everyone. Match the tool to your habits, and weigh whether keeping clipboard data local matters to you. ClipHistory is a universal binary running on macOS 12+, signed and notarized by Apple, for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs alike.
Ready to try it? Get ClipHistory for macOS ($19.99) — a one-time payment, 12-month license, no auto-renewal. Signed and notarized by Apple, runs on macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon and Intel).