A Mac remembers exactly one thing you copied. Copy a link, then copy a line of code, and the link is gone. macOS 26 Tahoe finally added a small clipboard history to Spotlight, but it forgets everything after a week at most, so the question in 2026 is no longer whether you need a clipboard manager but which of the many is worth the menu bar space.
I have run most of them over the years, and I have narrowed this to four that cover every real use case: the one I built, the polished one with an iPhone app, the free one, and the one you may already have. Every price and limit below was checked against the vendor's own site on 4 September 2026.
The four compared (at a glance)
| App | Price | History limit | Sync | Screenshot OCR | Snippets | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SnipVault ⭐ | $29.99/yr or $79 once | Unlimited | Mac to Mac (iCloud) | Yes, with history | Yes, with placeholders | All-in-one, pay once |
| Paste | $29.99/yr or $89.99 once | Unlimited | Mac, iPhone, iPad | Search inside copied images | No | iPhone sync, visual browsing |
| Maccy | Free (or $9.99 App Store) | 999 items | No | Partial | No | Free, text-first |
| Raycast | Free; Pro $8/mo | 3 months free, unlimited on Pro | No | Searches screenshots | Yes | Launcher users |
What actually matters in a clipboard manager
Feature lists are long and mostly the same. After living with these apps, four things decide whether one stays installed:
- How long it remembers. Caps of 999 items or three months sound generous until the thing you need is the tracking number from last quarter.
- How fast you find it. Keyboard-first search across the full text of every item beats scrolling thumbnails, every time.
- What it refuses to keep. Your clipboard carries passwords, one-time codes and card numbers. A good manager ignores password managers and lets secrets expire.
- What it costs over three years. A free app, a $30-a-year subscription and an $80 lifetime licence look very different by year three.
1. SnipVault — best overall, pay once
SnipVault is the app I built because three apps were doing one job on my Mac: Paste for history, TextSniper for grabbing text off screenshots, TextExpander for snippets. It keeps an unlimited, full-text-searchable history of text, links, images, files, colours and GIFs, and adds the two things nothing else on this list bundles.
The first is screenshot OCR that keeps a history. Press ⇧⌘2, drag over any text you cannot
select, a video frame, a locked PDF, a slide on a call, and Apple's on-device Vision engine reads
it onto your clipboard. The screenshot and its text both land in the vault, so a week later you can
search by a word you remember from that slide. The second is snippet expansion: type :sig
in Mail, Slack or a terminal and it expands inline, with the date, the clipboard and the cursor
position filled in. It imports Raycast, Espanso and TextExpander libraries.
Privacy is where I spent the most time. There is no server and no account. Password managers are ignored by default, content apps mark as concealed is never stored, and copied one-time codes and card numbers delete themselves after 60 seconds. If you never enter a licence key, the app makes no network requests at all.
Pros
- History, OCR and snippets in one keyboard-first palette
- Secrets expire on their own
- $79 lifetime, every plan has every feature
- Runs on macOS 13, so older Macs get a clipboard history too
Cons
- No iPhone app
- Sync between Macs is still rolling out
- Youngest app here
Pick it if you would otherwise run two or three of these tools side by side and want to pay once. Try it free at snipvault.io.
2. Paste — best for iPhone and iPad
Paste is the most polished clipboard manager on the Mac, and it has been for a decade. Big visual previews, Pinboards to organise what you reuse, shared pinboards for teams, and a Power Search that finds text inside images you have copied. Its real advantage is devices: iPhone and iPad apps with an iOS keyboard, synced through iCloud, so the address you copied on your phone is on your Mac.
The complaints in its reviews are almost all about money. It moved from a one-time purchase to a subscription in 2020 and locked out the people who had already paid, and the annual price has since doubled. It is also the only app here with no text expansion.
Pros
- iPhone, iPad and Vision apps with mature iCloud sync
- Beautiful, mouse-friendly interface
- Shared pinboards and a Teams plan
Cons
- Most expensive subscription in the category
- No snippet expansion, no region OCR
- Requires macOS 14
Pick it if your clipboard has to be on your phone. Nothing else here does that well.
3. Maccy — best free
Maccy is the clipboard manager to try first if you want something free. It is keyboard-driven, fast, and does one job: a searchable list of your recent copies with pinning and plain-text paste. Version 2.7 added copying text out of image previews. It has been maintained for years, and being open source you can read exactly what it does with your clipboard.
The limits are the trade for the price. History caps at 999 items, there is no sync between Macs and the maintainer has said there will not be, no collections or snippets, and reviewers have reported memory use climbing past a gigabyte with large image histories.
Pros
- Free, open source, no account
- Fast and keyboard-first
- Ignores concealed content and password managers
Cons
- 999-item cap
- No sync, no snippets, no OCR
- Memory grows with big image histories
Pick it if you mostly copy text and refuse to pay for a clipboard.
4. Raycast — best if you already use it
Raycast is a launcher with a good clipboard history bolted on, plus snippets and a search that reads text inside screenshots it has indexed. If you already live in Raycast, its clipboard history is a genuine bonus and a separate app has to earn its place.
Three things push people to a dedicated manager. On the free plan, anything older than three months is deleted, and removing the limit means Pro at about $96 a year, more than any standalone clipboard manager. Clipboard history never syncs between Macs, by design. And an open GitHub issue from January 2026 reports it missing a fraction of copies for some users. I wrote a separate guide to Raycast's clipboard history if you want the details.
Pros
- Already installed for many people
- Snippets and screenshot search included
- History stays on your Mac
Cons
- Three-month limit on the free plan
- No sync, and Pro is the priciest way to lift the limit
- Pinning is the only organisation
Pick it if Raycast is already your launcher and three months of history is enough.
What about the built-in one in macOS Tahoe?
macOS 26 Tahoe is the first version with a clipboard history. Turn on Results from Clipboard under System Settings, Spotlight, then press ⌘Space and ⌘4. It keeps items for 30 minutes, 8 hours or 7 days and then discards them. It is one list, not a library: no pinning, no search across last month, nothing on macOS 15 or earlier. For many people it is enough, and the honest advice is to use it for a week before installing anything. The moment you wish you could find something older than seven days, one of the four above is the answer. I wrote up the full guide to clipboard history on a Mac including the Tahoe settings.
Frequently asked questions
Does macOS have a built-in clipboard manager?
Only on macOS 26 Tahoe, inside Spotlight: press ⌘Space then ⌘4. It keeps items for 30 minutes,
8 hours or 7 days. macOS 15 and earlier keep only the last item you copied.
What is the best free clipboard manager for Mac?
Maccy, free and open source and maintained for years. Raycast's free plan is the best free option
if you also want snippets, with a three-month history limit.
Are clipboard managers safe for passwords?
They can be. All four here ignore password managers and content flagged as concealed; SnipVault also
auto-expires one-time codes and card numbers after 60 seconds. Avoid any manager that syncs your
history to a server you do not control.
Which clipboard manager syncs to iPhone?
Paste, through iCloud, with iPhone and iPad apps. Maccy and Raycast do not sync at all. SnipVault
syncs between Macs only.
Do I need a clipboard manager on macOS Tahoe?
Try the Spotlight clipboard for a week. If you never wish you could find something older than seven
days, pin an item or search by a word inside a screenshot, you do not.
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