A Mac clipboard manager that keeps every copy.
Press Shift-Command-V and everything you have copied is still there — text and images, searchable, with a large preview on the space bar. It is stored as ordinary files, and this page names them.
What a Mac clipboard manager is actually for
macOS gives you one clipboard slot. Copy a second thing and the first is gone — not archived, not recoverable, gone. Each loss is trivial on its own: a URL you have to find again, a line of config you already had, a tracking number you copied ten seconds too early. The cost is that you learn, without ever deciding to, to paste immediately and never copy twice in a row. A Mac clipboard manager cancels both rules, and a real clipboard history on a Mac is what is left once you stop losing that first copy.
The mechanism under a Mac clipboard manager is unglamorous. Coco checks the system pasteboard twice a second. When the contents change it writes down what is there: the text, or the image, the time, and which application was in front — so the row carries the icon of the app it came from. Copy something you already have and it does not appear twice; the existing entry returns to the top with a fresh timestamp. No indexing service, no daemon, no network call anywhere in it.
The uncomfortable part deserves saying out loud, because most pages about copy paste history on a Mac skip it. A Mac clipboard manager sees everything you copy, and you copy things you would never type into a search box: passwords out of a password manager, API tokens, recovery codes. So the question is not whether the feature is convenient — it obviously is — but where the record ends up and how fast you can erase it. The rest answers that with file paths rather than adjectives.
What this Mac clipboard manager keeps, and where it keeps it
Text, images and the app they came from
Text is stored as you copied it, with one deliberate exception: trailing newlines are trimmed by default, and on the live clipboard too, so a later Command-V anywhere pastes clean. Every other flavour on the pasteboard, rich text, HTML, files, is carried across untouched. Images are saved as PNGs named by the SHA-256 of their own bytes, so the same screenshot copied twice costs one file. Anything over 10 MB is downscaled to 4096 pixels on its longest edge, and if it is still over, skipped rather than silently degraded.
Search, and the space bar
Type in the panel and it filters on the clip text and on any note you attached. The most recent 320 entries are searched in the frame you typed; older ones go to a background task and merge in as it finishes, so thousands do not stall the keystroke. Selecting a row shows it in the preview pane beside the list, and the space bar expands that into a large preview — the difference between pasting the right screenshot and the one next to it. If a clip is a file path, the preview is QuickLook.
Favourites, notes and getting rid of things
Anything you paste constantly — an address, a licence key, a snippet — can be pinned into Favourites, a separate list with its own tab and its own file. Favourites are exempt from the history limit and from auto-cleanup, so they do not scroll away while the rest rotates. Any entry can carry a short note, searchable alongside the clip. Delete removes the selected rows, and Settings has a Clear button for the history and another for the favourites.
Pasting back into the app you came from
Return writes the clip to the system clipboard, brings the application you were in back to the front, and sends Command-V to it. That last step needs Accessibility permission, because macOS discards synthetic keystrokes from apps it has not been told to trust. Coco does not fail quietly there: it says the permission is off, tells you the clip is on the clipboard anyway, and offers to open the right pane of System Settings.
Where the history actually lives
Two JSON files — clipboard-history.json and clipboard-favorites.json — plus a folder of PNGs. If iCloud Drive is available they go to iCloud Drive/Coco by default, so a second Mac on the same account sees the same history. That is your own iCloud, not a server of ours, and Coco has no account and no telemetry. Turning off Use iCloud Sync forces everything back to ~/Library/Application Support/Coco. A Mac clipboard manager should be plain about the rest too. Coco does not encrypt these files, and it does not detect that a clip came from a password manager. A copied password is stored like any other text until you delete it.
This Mac clipboard manager next to macOS, Raycast, Alfred and Paste
Start with the baseline, because it is why this category exists: macOS has no clipboard history at all. The Finder's Show Clipboard window shows the single item currently on it, and no setting or hidden pane turns that into a list. Every Mac clipboard manager below is filling the same hole, and all are competent at the core of it. The differences are what surrounds that, and what it costs you.
Raycast gives you clipboard history in the free tier and sells Pro at $8 a month for the rest, so if you already live in Raycast there is little reason to add anything. Alfred's is part of the Powerpack, around £34 once, and years of workflows are a good reason to stay put. Paste is the specialist, at roughly $2.49 a month, which over four years costs more than either one-time licence here. Coco is $49 once, and the clipboard is one feature of a launcher that also draws the Launchpad grid macOS 26 removed. If clipboard history is genuinely all you want, Paste is the more focused product and we would rather say so.
| Coco | macOS | Raycast | Alfred | Paste | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clipboard history | Powerpack | ||||
| Clipboard history without paying | 7-day trial | ||||
| Bundled with an app launcher | |||||
| Launchpad-style app grid | |||||
| One-time purchase | Included | ||||
| Price | $49 once | Included | Free or $8/mo | £34 once | ~$2.49/mo |
Setting up clipboard history on your Mac
Install Coco and press Shift-Command-V
Drag Coco to Applications and open it. The clipboard hotkey is Shift-Command-V out of the box and you can change it. The list starts empty — nothing recovers what you copied before Coco was running — and fills from your next copy.
Decide how much to keep, and for how long
Settings → Clipboard. History Limit is unlimited by default; pick 100, 500, 1,000, 2,000 or 5,000 if you would rather it stayed small. Auto Cleanup is off by default and drops anything older than 7, 30, 90 or 365 days at the next launch. If you copy credentials at work, change it first.
Allow Accessibility so Return pastes
Pasting straight back into the app you came from means sending it a Command-V, and macOS drops that keystroke until Coco is ticked under Privacy & Security → Accessibility. Coco prompts you the first time and can open that pane. Skip it if you prefer — you then paste by hand.
Choose where the history is stored
Coco routes its data to iCloud Drive/Coco by default when iCloud Drive is available, which keeps two Macs in step. If you would rather that record never left this machine, turn off Use iCloud Sync; the storage line then reads On This Mac.
Questions people actually ask
- Does macOS have a clipboard history?
- No. macOS keeps exactly one item on the clipboard, and copying anything else replaces it permanently. The Finder has an Edit → Show Clipboard window, but that shows the single current item, not a list, and no preference, hidden pane or terminal command turns it into one. Universal Clipboard, which shares the clipboard between a Mac and an iPhone, is also a single slot. Keeping clipboard history on a Mac therefore requires a third-party application: Coco, Raycast, Alfred with the Powerpack, Paste, or one of several others. That is the entire reason this category exists.
- Where does Coco store my clipboard history?
- In two JSON files, clipboard-history.json and clipboard-favorites.json, plus a folder of PNG files for image clips. By default, when iCloud Drive is available, those live in iCloud Drive/Coco, so a second Mac on the same Apple account sees the same history. That is your own iCloud Drive, not a server belonging to Coco: no account to create, no telemetry, no upload path of Coco's own anywhere in the clipboard code. If you would rather it never left the machine, turn off Use iCloud Sync in Settings — everything then stays in ~/Library/Application Support/Coco.
- What happens if I copy a password?
- It is stored, like any other text. Coco does not detect that a clip came from a password manager and does not treat it differently, so a copied password, API token or recovery code sits in the history until something removes it. There are three ways: select the row and press delete, use the Clear button in Settings, or set Auto Cleanup to 7 or 30 days so anything older is dropped at the next launch. Coco does not encrypt these files — they are protected by whatever protects the rest of your home folder, which on a Mac should mean FileVault.
- Does it keep images as well as text?
- Both. Copy a screenshot and it is stored as a PNG named by the hash of its own contents, so the same image copied twice does not cost two files. Images over 10 MB are downscaled to 4096 pixels on the longest edge, and anything still over is skipped rather than stored at half quality. Select an image row and it appears in the preview pane; press space with the search field empty and it expands to a large preview, which is how you tell two similar screenshots apart before pasting one. Image clips can also be saved out as PNG files.
- How far back does the history go?
- As far as you let it. The limit is unlimited by default, so nothing is discarded until you say so; the alternatives are 100, 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000 entries, and once a limit is set the oldest fall off as new ones arrive. Auto-cleanup is separate and off by default, dropping anything older than 7, 30, 90 or 365 days when Coco next starts. Favourites are exempt from both, so a pinned licence key does not expire under you. Re-copying something already in the history moves it back to the top rather than adding a duplicate.
- How is this different from Raycast, Alfred or Paste?
- The core is the same in all four — keep the copies, search them, paste one back — so the Mac clipboard manager you want depends on what surrounds it. Raycast includes clipboard history free and charges $8 a month for Pro; if you already use Raycast, use its clipboard. Alfred puts it behind the Powerpack, about £34 once. Paste does this one thing only, at roughly $2.49 a month. Coco is $49 once after a seven-day trial with no card, and its clipboard sits inside a launcher that also brings back the Launchpad grid macOS 26 removed.
Copy the prompt, or send it straight to the AI you already use — it drives Coco through the same commands you would type yourself.
Install the Coco skill (npx skills add butterflydream-ai/Coco --skill coco -g -y), then use coco to search my clipboard history for "invoice" and paste the newest match into the front app.Under the hood
- coco clipboard search --query "invoice" --json
- coco clipboard paste --id <id>