The Best Free Clipboard History & Clipboard Manager for Mac is Maccy
Maccy is a really good free clipboard manager for the Mac, the type of software that is so good that you’re grateful it is available for free, in the classic spirit of computing and open source software. It’s fast, unobtrusive, allows for text and images, with a great set of features, and a simple to use interface, what’s not to like?
If you haven’t been exposed to clipboard managers before, let’s get you acquainted. Clipboard managers are wildly useful pieces of software that extend your Macs clipboard beyond a single item, keeping a clipboard history so that you can return to access other things you copied to the clipboard previously, even if it’s different media. Essentially this means that you can copy anything, be it text, content, files, images, videos, or just about anything else you can imagine, including content from Universal Clipboard, and retrieve it all quickly, even if you’ve since put something else into the copy/paste buffers. That’s where the clipboard history comes in, which by default keeps track of the last number of items that have come into the clipboard, and with Maccy specifically, that means 200 of the last “copy” procedures will be kept in the clipboard history.
Maccy also shows a thumbnail preview of images and video that are contained within the clipboard history:
One of Maccy’s best fest features though is Search, which lets you easily search through your clipboard history by keyword match.
Searching your clipboard history is so beyond useful that it should be a feature in every clipboard manager (and this whole thing should be built natively into MacOS Finder for that matter).
If a clipboard manager appeals to you, or you’re using another one that you’re not impressed by, give Maccy a try, it’s free anyway.
As you can see Maccy is on Github which means you can not only download and install the app for free but you can access the source too.
If you’re thrilled with the app, you can also buy Maccy on the developers website or directly from the Mac App Store for $10, which is obviously a great way to show gratitude to the developer and support the app.
Maccy has tons of customizable preferences as well, including the handy ability to automatically start upon restarting the Mac, as well as control the clipboard history buffer size, select particular apps to ignore, set hotkeys, toggle on/off, and much more:
If you’re a regular reader of OSXDaily, you may have noticed that I have previously covered another free clipboard manager for the Mac called CopyClip, and that article generated some great discussion about other clipboard managers for MacOS. After several commenters on that article recommended Maccy, and knowing how Mac savvy our audience is, I knew had to try it out for myself, and after using it for 2 months straight I can’t imagine going back to another clipboard manager, Maccy is just better. So, thank you to Stewart and geeMoney for the excellent software recommendation.
Have you tried Maccy as a clipboard manager on your Mac, and what did you think? Where do you rate it against other free clipboard managers? What do you think about Maccy compared to other apps, or paid apps with much more elaborate features like Alfred? Is there a better free clipboard manager and clipboard history app for the Mac? Share your perspectives in the comments.
Ok, Maccy works great, can anyone recommend a cross platform clipboard app? I need an app that works seamlessly on my iPhone and iPad and Mac
I have used and really liked ClipMenu for a long time. I got wind a while ago that it would no longer upgrade so I began looking for a replacement. Your effusive praise for Maccy caused me to give it a try, hoping to remedy the one flaw ClipMenu has: I can’t delete previous items in a bunch, only one at a time.
After using Maccy for two days, I have to say it is not very good, IMHO. I’m certainly sticking with ClipMenu but if that ever dies, I’ll return to Maccy for a second look.
NOT FREE! Listed for 9.99 in App Store. Couldn’t get zip file to download in github.
Maccy is free, available as a download from Github a zip file at https://github.com/p0deje/Maccy/releases
This may help you if you’re unfamiliar with downloading apps from Github: https://osxdaily.com/2023/10/20/how-to-download-a-mac-app-from-github/
Hi,
The King and all time champion is still CopyPaste.
Thanks
Joe, an anonymous email name and address for the times we live in
is it worth installing Maccy when we have TextEdit as the MacBook native clipboard?
I am rather fond of “ClipTools” from CleverMedia and the host of a great Mac help website, MacMost.com. It’s free and it is quite easy to use and comes with additional functions that can be quite convenient. It’s available in the App Store and if you’re looking for a clipboard manager it’s well worth checking out.
I’m a long-time Alfred user. I don’t see much in Maccy that I’d want that Alfred doesn’t have.
One exception: displaying clipped images looks pretty neat.
But Alfred has so many niceties that would be hard to give up for displayed clipped images.
For instance, you can have named, stored, parameterized clips. For example, I have one titled simply “b”. It takes the content of your top-of-stack clipboard, wraps it inside “
“, and pastes it. This is super-useful in things like Disqus comments, when you want to quote something someone else said.
At least for its “Powerpack,” Alfred has a “pay once, upgrade free forever” policy, which is *real* nice! Don’t know how they manage to make money with that model!
I prefer Copy ‘Em Paste because you can “star” specific clips and then not accidentally delete them if you need to clear your clipboard history. If you use certain text/links/images/etc. repeatedly, it’s an extremely handy feature to have.
I will second this recommendation, I use Maccy as my clipboard manager and I really like it. No complaints, and if there are other features I need I can’t think of them, so therefore I am happy with it.
One thing I love about the Mac platform is how many high quality apps there are available for free.
I have used Clipy for a long time. When you introduced CopyClip I tried it but Clipy was way better than that. But now this Maccy app looks to be much better. I am trying it while still keeping Clipy. Thank you.