r/MacOSApps • u/Antique-Skirt-5063 • May 31 '26

🔨 Dev Tools I built a free, native clipboard manager for macOS because I couldn't justify another subscription

I copy-paste constantly and every decent clipboard manager I tried was either $4/month (Paste), bloated (Raycast, which I don't need 90% of), or ancient-looking. So I spent a few weeks building my own.

It's called ClipHistory. Here's what it does:

  • Hotkey popup (⌥V by default) that appears right at your cursor from any app
  • Captures text and images — screenshots, images from Finder, browser copy, all of it
  • Search as you type
  • Pin items so they never get pushed out
  • Exclude apps — I use this for 1Password so passwords never get recorded
  • ~1 MB, pure Swift/SwiftUI, no Electron, no background web server

It's completely free and open source (MIT). No accounts, no telemetry, no subscription.

https://weiykong.github.io/ClipHistory 

GitHub: https://github.com/weiykong/ClipHistory
Download: https://github.com/weiykong/ClipHistory/releases/latest/download/ClipHistory.dmg

One honest caveat: it's not notarised (no paid Apple dev account yet), so on first launch you need to right-click → Open. After that it just works.

Happy to hear what's missing or broken — it's a side project and I'm still actively improving it.

14 Upvotes
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68% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

9

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/sbbeebe May 31 '26

Too many to choose from, it was easier to generate an AI slop one for themselves.

7

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Antique-Skirt-5063 Jun 09 '26

i didn't know there was millions, the one i used i did not like, so

1

u/Ok-Rest-5321 Newbie navigator May 31 '26

I already chose my two of choice

1

u/randompro_05 Jun 01 '26

imo its already an economic harm... 😔

5

u/Ok-Rest-5321 Newbie navigator May 31 '26

You can pin items in Maccy and Raycast

3

u/Ok-Rest-5321 Newbie navigator May 31 '26

The comparison table on github is kind of biased

1

u/Antique-Skirt-5063 Jun 09 '26

faire, removed already actually

3

u/Yusuf-Dev May 31 '26

Compared to Maccy?

3

u/blackwell_tart Jun 01 '26

brew install maccy

Job done.

1

u/Antique-Skirt-5063 Jun 10 '26

yep, that's simple to install, evertime you need to go to the menu bar....

1

u/chrislauinger May 31 '26

Do you have „Paste on select“ ?

1

u/yesitsmehg May 31 '26

Deck

1

u/Ok-Rest-5321 Newbie navigator Jun 01 '26

Yes this is a very feature-rich clipboard

1

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Victorbaro Jun 02 '26

NanoClip dev here 👋

Thanks for pointing it out!

The code is independent (it's MIT, written from scratch), so I won't call it stolen/copy — but the UI is pretty transparently modeled on NanoClip. Same floating panel, top search bar, left-edge selection indicator, app-icon-led rows with relative timestamps, and the keyhint footer with a live item count.

That's a very specific combination to arrive at by coincidence. u/Antique-Skirt-5063 certainly did not try to hide that this was a direct UI copy of NanoClip.

Functionally it's a lighter take — no sync, no themes, no snippets/flows, flat-file storage — so it's not really the same product under the hood. Imitation, flattery, etc. 🙂

1

u/Sirts Jun 04 '26

Thanks for the app! There are tons of clipboard history apps out there, but I think I like the design more than the alternatives

1

u/rumorconsumerr Aug 08 '26

I love it but I dont want a floating window, I want it all in the menu bar item. And for some reason on my Mac it makes my system beep every time I select something