How long will the summary be?

As long as you ask for. Prompt for three bullets, a single sentence, or a short paragraph; the model follows your instruction.

Can I summarize text from a PDF or webpage?

Yes. Copy it like any other text. If it arrives with broken line breaks, run Clean first, then Summarize for a cleaner result.

Does my text leave my Mac?

Only to the AI provider you configured with your own API key. ClipHistory has no cloud or account and keeps your clipboard history local.

Can I keep the original after summarizing?

Yes. The full text stays in clipboard history among your last 150 unpinned clips, and you can pin it if you want to keep it indefinitely.

Turn Copied Text into a Summary on Mac

You don't always need to read all of something. An article, a long email thread, a dense report, a chat backlog, sometimes you just need the gist. The fastest path on a Mac is to copy the text and turn it into a summary right from your clipboard, without pasting it into a separate tool and copying the result back.

Copy, summarize, paste

ClipHistory is a macOS clipboard manager with AI transforms built in. Copy any block of text, press Cmd+Shift+V, select the clip, and run the Summarize transform. A condensed version appears as a new clip you can paste into notes, a message, or a doc.

The source can be anything: a web article, an email, a PDF excerpt, a Slack thread you copied. Once it's on your clipboard, summarizing is one shortcut away.

Control the length and focus

A summary is only useful if it's the right size and points at what you care about. Because you're prompting a language model, you can specify both:

"Summarize in three bullet points."
"Give me a one-sentence takeaway."
"Summarize, focusing on the action items."
"Summarize for someone who hasn't read any of this."

ClipHistory connects to five AI providers, Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google, or a custom endpoint, using your own API key. Pick the model whose summaries you find clearest, and the request goes directly from your Mac to that provider.

Everything stays local

ClipHistory keeps your clipboard history on your machine. There's no cloud and no account. When you summarize, your text goes straight to the AI provider you set up with your own key, and nothing is stored on a ClipHistory server. Whatever you're summarizing, a confidential report or a public article, the text doesn't pass through a ClipHistory backend, because there isn't one.

The app is a universal binary, signed and notarized by Apple, native on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, and it runs on macOS 12 or later.

A summarize routine

Copy the long text you want condensed.
Press Cmd+Shift+V and select the clip.
Run Summarize, specifying length and focus.
Paste the summary where you need it. The full text stays in your history if you want to dig in later.

If you summarize the same kind of content repeatedly, daily reports, recurring newsletters, save your instruction as a snippet so the format stays consistent. For a summary you reference often, pin it; pinned clips don't count against the 150-clip limit on regular history.

Clean first when the source is messy

Text copied from PDFs or web pages frequently arrives with broken line breaks and stray characters. Run Clean before Summarize so the model summarizes coherent sentences instead of fragments. Two quick transforms in sequence beat one transform fighting bad input.

Match the summary to what you'll do next

A good summary isn't generic, it's shaped by the decision you're about to make. The same article summarized three ways serves three purposes:

To decide whether to read it in full: ask for a one-line takeaway and a note on who it's for.
To act on it: ask for the concrete steps or recommendations only.
To share it: ask for a short paragraph a colleague could read cold.

Because you write the prompt, the summary bends to your intent instead of forcing you to extract the useful part from a generic blurb. That's the practical edge of summarizing with a model you instruct rather than a fixed feature.

It scales to the things you skip

Be honest about what piles up: the long threads you mark unread, the reports you mean to get to, the newsletters you archive unopened. Each is a copy-and-summarize away from a thirty-second decision about whether it deserves more of your time. The point isn't to never read deeply; it's to stop paying full-attention cost for things that only needed a glance. A clipboard summary turns "I'll read it later" into "I read the gist now."

Keep the originals you act on

When a summary leads to a decision, you sometimes want the source on hand to back it up. The full text stays in your history, and you can pin it so it survives past the 150-clip limit. That way the evidence behind a summary doesn't disappear the moment you copy your next twenty things.

One purchase, used constantly

Summarizing is a habit, not a one-off. ClipHistory is a one-time purchase, $19.99 for a 12-month license, with no auto-renewal, so a tool you reach for many times a day doesn't become a recurring charge. Because you use your own API key, AI usage is billed by your provider directly at their rates.

Skip the full read when you only need the point. Copy, summarize, paste, and keep your text on your own Mac.

Get ClipHistory for macOS ($19.99, one-time): https://cliphistory.com/download