The clipboard on your Mac isn't a particularly impressive feature. You can copy something, and then paste it. That's pretty much it—it's just a small, temporary storage area.
If you spend a lot of time copying and pasting, the standard clipboard on your Mac probably hinders you more than it helps. When this is the case, you need to download one of these top clipboard management apps.
Why You Need a Clipboard Manager
The problem with the standard Mac clipboard is that you can only copy and paste one element at a time. Each time you copy some text, a picture, a URL, or anything else, it overwrites the last item you copied. Each time you restart your Mac, your clipboard is emptied.
Sure, there's a secondary clipboard you can cut and paste with on Mac. But what if you need more than this? What if you want to keep a history of everything you copy onto your clipboard so you can access it whenever you want?
In its simplest form, this is what a clipboard manager is for. The reasons for using a clipboard manager are numerous. With that in mind, we've searched the web to recommend the best clipboard managers for Mac.
1. Flycut or Jumpcut
Flycut is an open-source clipboard manager designed specifically for developers. Non-developers can use it too, but the app isn't designed for copying images or tables.
Flycut is based on another open-source clipboard manager called Jumpcut, which also doesn't copy or cut images or tables. The apps are pretty interchangeable in form and function.
But for managing anything other than basic text, URLs, or snippets of code, you'll want to look at other apps on this list.
When you launch Flycut or Jumpcut, you'll find their icon displayed in the menu bar. As you start to copy and paste snippets, you can access these by clicking on that icon, then Control-clicking the snippet you want to work with.
It's more streamlined, however, to press Shift + Cmd + V in Flycut or Control + Option + V in Jumpcut and use the left or right arrows to navigate your clipboard library.
From the preferences window for either app, you can change the keyboard shortcuts to whatever you want. Flycut can also sync with Dropbox to back up your clipboard history.
These apps might be perfect for your developer workflow. But for other uses, they might be a little lacking.
Download: Flycut (Free)
Download: Jumpcut (Free)
2. CopyClip
If you're looking for a simple, lightweight clipboard manager, CopyClip is a decent option, despite being very similar to Flycut and Jumpcut.
Like Flycut and Jumpcut, the app can only copy plain text (including data from tables), so no formatting such as hyperlinks will be maintained.
Unlike Flycut/Jumpcut, however, there is no hotkey to access your library in a floating window. You can only click the icon in the menu bar and select the snippet you want to copy from your dropdown library.
Within the app's preferences you can set a limit on the number of snippets CopyClip will hold onto to help save on disk space.
There's also an option to exclude certain apps from being saved to CopyClip's clipboard history. If you copy sensitive information from some apps like password managers, this feature could be particularly useful to keep your passwords secure.
Download: CopyClip (Free)
3. CopyClip 2
The developers of CopyClip created a second version of the app with advanced features. CopyClip 2 can record formatted text and lets you pin clips so you can access them over and over again in the menu list.
You can still exclude saving content from certain apps in CopyClip 2 and limit the number of clips you save. But you can access the clip menu with keyboard shortcuts—namely Control + Shift + Space and Control + Space.
The app also integrates with your MacBook Pro's touch bar and lets you select clips from there. You can also search CopyClip 2's history to find clips you saved a while back.
Sadly, CopyClip 2 still has issues copying images and tables. Images are recorded as links, while tables have some formatting preserved, but only enough to paste into a pre-made table.
CopyClip 2 is overall an improvement on CopyClip. But with so many similar drawbacks, not everyone will want to pay $7.99 to have it on their Mac.
The app does have a seven-day free trial if you want to test it out. But if you can live without keyboard shortcuts and pinned clips, you might prefer the still-updated original CopyClip.
Download: CopyClip 2 ($7.99)
4. Clipy
If you like the idea of pinned clips, but don't want to pay for a clipboard manager, we'd recommend trying Clipy and using the Snippets feature.
Snippets in the Snippets list act like pinned clips in CopyClip 2. They just open in a separate menu than the main clipboard history, so they can be easily re-accessed, but they don't clog the top of the clipboard history list.
Clipy appears in the top menu of your Mac's screen, and you can also access it by hitting Cmd + Shift + V (unless you change the shortcut in the preferences).
Clipy seems to be able to record images for some users, but I had difficulty doing so. Images from the internet were recorded as links, but pictures from my computer weren't recorded. Comments on Clipy's GitHub show others shared my issue.
Clipy also handles tables the way CopyClip 2 does: remembering the formatting when pasting into a new table, but never re-creating a table entirely.
Maybe preserving tables and images will convince you to ultimately pay for a clipboard manager. But if free pinned clips seem like enough, Clipy is probably for you!
Download: Clipy (Free)
5. Copy'Em or Copy'Em + Paste Queue
Personally, Copy'Em is my favorite Mac clipboard manager. It offers pretty much all the features mentioned elsewhere in this article, while somehow being extremely unobtrusive.
You access your Copy'Em clipboard library via the menu bar. This library can keep track of pretty much everything you copy: plain text, rich text, images, code snippets, and even files.
You can sort these as you wish, and either drag and drop them to where you need the items, or copy the item by clicking on an item. If you copy a lot of items, these can be sorted into lists, which you can then search for easy access.
My favorite features, however, are the ability to take and save screenshots directly into the clipboard manager, and to quickly pause Copy'Em, for those times you just want to use your Mac's built-in clipboard.
You can get Copy'Em in a bundle with Paste Queue. Paste Queue lets you copy many things at once, and paste them in your preferred order elsewhere. No going back and forth between sources!
Copy'Em and Paste Queue go well together, and since Paste Queue is $6.99, you save by getting them together for $17.99. But if you just want Copy'Em, that'll be $14.99.
Download: Copy'Em ($14.99)
Download: Copy'Em + Paste Queue ($17.99)
6. Paste
Paste really is an impressive clipboard manager, and has the nicest user interface, by far. If it weren't on a subscription model, it might be my favorite app on the list.
Once you've chosen how many snippets you want the app to store, from 50 all the way up to an unlimited number, you can start accessing and organizing everything you've copied in Paste by pressing Shift + Cmd + V. Not just text, but also images and tables too!
Paste offers Pinboards, which are effectively folders that you can organize your snippets into. As your number of snippets grows, you can use the search feature to find what you're looking for. Once found, just double-click the snippet. Then you're ready to paste it wherever you like.
Paste is free to download, but after a 14-day free trial you must pay $0.99 per month, or $9.99 per year to use it.
Paying this gives you Paste on your iOS and iPadOS devices as well, so you can sync your clipboards across devices without buying the app separately. But if you don't want to sync your clipboards, you might prefer another app on this list.
Download: Paste (Subscription required)
7. Unclutter
More than just a clipboard manager, Unclutter is designed to help keep your desktop organized.
Once installed, move your cursor to the top of the screen, then scroll down with your mouse's scroll button (or two fingers on the trackpad). Unclutter's window will appear.
This window is split into three panes. The central pane is where you can search for files and store files that you need frequent access to.
The right-hand pane is where you can create, store, and search for notes that you want to make on the fly.
The left pane is your clipboard library. Every time you copy something on your Mac, it will be stored here. Formatting is lost except for hyperlinks, but you can favorite and edit your clips.
To copy items back to your clipboard, you have to click on the item within the pane, Control-click, then click copy. Now you can paste them.
Within the app's preferences you can change the size of your clipboard library (up to 50 items), as well as change the location where your notes and clipboard will be saved.
Unclutter is mostly a productivity app. If you only want a clipboard manager, check out other apps on this list instead.
Download: Unclutter ($19.99)
A New Level of Productivity
The limitations of the default Mac clipboard leave many users feeling frustrated. Not having a simple way of saving what we copy is a basic feature that shouldn't be overlooked anymore.
Downloading any of the clipboard managers mentioned in this article should help you increase your productivity while using a Mac, and we hope it will boost your workflow like never before. I've found my favorite clipboard manager here—I hope you find yours too!