Copy is a free, open-source clipboard manager for macOS. Press ⇧⌘V and a shelf of cards slides up from the bottom of your screen showing everything you have copied, ready to search, pin, edit, and paste back. It is local-first, native, and deliberately quiet: no account, no cloud, no telemetry.

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See it in action

Watch the one minute demo (MP4, 11 MB). The video is built from code in video/.

Why Copy

The built-in clipboard remembers one thing. Copy remembers all of it, as a visual shelf you summon from any app. Every copy becomes a card the moment you make it: text, images, links, files, colors, all captured automatically, newest first, and instantly searchable, including the text inside screenshots.

Features

The shelf

• Summon with ⇧⌘V from any app; every copy becomes a card, instantly searchable
• Unlimited history with full-text search and scope chips (All / Text / Images / Links / Files)
• On-device OCR makes text inside images searchable, with the match highlighted in results
• Space bar previews a card before you commit, Quick Look for files
• Drag any card out of the shelf, or select several and drag them out together
• Liquid Glass on macOS 26, with a solid, legible fallback (and Reduce Transparency support)
• Follow the system appearance, or keep the shelf light or dark; attach it to the screen edge or let it float
• Haptic feedback on the trackpad when you switch tabs, file a card, paste, and more (optional)

Organizing

• Pinboards with colors and any emoji; drag a card onto a tab to keep it, switch with ⌘1–⌘9
• A callout names the board a dragged card will land in; reorder pinboards by dragging their tabs
• Favorites keep starred cards at the front of the shelf, and can be switched off entirely
• Search scoped to the active pinboard, or your whole history
• Click a card's title to rename it in place; multi-select for bulk actions
• Drawer-first: reach Settings, Updates, and every action from inside the shelf, and optionally hide the menu bar icon entirely

Editing and power tools

• A real rich text editor: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, with a live character / word / line count
• Copied source code is detected and syntax-highlighted right on the card, like Xcode
• Copy a hex color like #4C9DFF and the card shows the actual color
• Rotate copied images; adjust and re-copy colors
• Apple Writing Tools in the editor on macOS 15+

Pasting

• ⏎ pastes the selected card; ⌥⏎ strips formatting and pastes plain text
• Two-click-to-paste by default (single click selects, double click pastes), or switch to single-click
• Paste stack: queue several cards and walk through them on successive ⌘V presses, shown as a numbered queue with the next item marked
• ⌘O opens the selected link or file without pasting; ⌘Z undoes a delete
• App Intents so Shortcuts can paste your latest item, search, or paste from a pinboard

Private by design

• Everything stays on your Mac. No account, no cloud sync, no telemetry
• Respects the system concealed-type marker, so password managers are never recorded
• Per-app exclusions, plus hide the shelf from screen recordings and shares
• Configurable history retention; export and import your history as a single archive

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew install --cask tarikbc/tap/copy

Direct download

Grab the latest DMG from Releases, open it, and drag Copy to Applications. Requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.

On first launch, Copy asks for Accessibility access (to paste for you) and, on macOS 15.4+, pasteboard access. Summon it any time with ⇧⌘V.

Keyboard shortcuts

Build from source

Requirements: macOS 14+, Xcode 16+, and XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen).

xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project Copy.xcodeproj -scheme Copy -configuration Debug build

Core engine tests:

swift test --package-path CopyCore

The app is a thin SwiftUI + AppKit shell over CopyCore, a local Swift package (GRDB / SQLite + FTS5) that holds the clipboard engine, storage, and all the logic that carries a test suite. UI lives in the app target; behavior lives in CopyCore.

Cutting a release

Pushing a version tag (vX.Y.Z) runs .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds, signs, notarizes, and publishes the full release: a Developer ID signed and notarized DMG, a signed Sparkle update zip, an updated docs/appcast.xml committed back to main, and a GitHub release with both artifacts attached. See RELEASING.md for the required secrets and the release ritual, and Scripts/release.sh for the underlying pipeline (the same script CI runs).

Privacy

Copy is local-only, with one exception: link previews fetch the page title and favicon for copied links directly from the web. This is on by default and can be turned off in Settings under History. Aside from that and checking for app updates, Copy makes no network calls, has no analytics or crash reporting, and your clipboard history never leaves your Mac. Any app that marks its pasteboard content as concealed, such as a password manager, is skipped entirely, and you can add per-app exclusions for anything else you would rather Copy ignore.

Contributing

Copy is built in the open and contributions are welcome. Good places to start:

• ⭐ Star the repo and follow along
• 🐛 Open an issue for a bug or a feature idea
• 🔧 Send a pull request. The core engine lives in CopyCore and has its own test suite (swift test --package-path CopyCore); please add or update tests for any engine change

The design language is deliberately quiet and native (no colored card stripes, no clutter), and the app keeps a macOS 14 floor with newer-OS features gated behind availability checks.

Commits need a Signed-off-by trailer, which git commit -s adds for you. CI checks it. CONTRIBUTING.md has the build commands and explains what the sign-off certifies.

License

GPL-3.0. © 2026 Tarik Caramanico.

Forks are welcome and the code is yours to take. The name and the artwork are not part of that grant: NOTICE records an additional term under GPL-3.0 section 7(e), and TRADEMARK.md says what it means in practice. The short version is to ship your fork under your own name.