CopyClip on a Mac: a small clipboard tool and where it stops

Searching for copyclip almost always happens after a specific loss. Something was copied, something else was copied on top of it, and the first thing is gone. The name comes up because the original CopyClip has been free on the Mac App Store for years, which makes it the cheapest possible answer to that loss. The complication is that there are now two Mac apps called CopyClip from the same developer at two different prices, plus at least one more from an unrelated developer, and the differences decide whether the download solves the problem or just occupies a menu bar slot.

What follows is what each one is, what it costs, what it does in a working day, and the three jobs it does not do. Prices and version numbers below were read from the vendor's own pages and the Mac App Store listings on 28 September 2026.

Three apps, one name

The name is doing more work than it should. On the Mac App Store, searching for it returns CopyClip and CopyClip 2, both published by FIPLAB Ltd, which describes itself on its site as making Mac and iOS apps in London since 2009. It also returns a third app called CopyClip from ENVISION TECHNOLABS LLP, which is a different product from a different company that happens to share the name, and an iOS app with a similar name from a third developer.

Before installing anything, check the developer name on the listing, not the app name. In a category where the app asks for permission to watch everything that gets copied, the publisher is the only part of the listing that matters.

The two FIPLAB apps are not versions of each other in the usual sense. CopyClip, at version 1.9.86, still runs on macOS 10.13 or later and was last updated on 26 May 2026. CopyClip 2, at version 3.993, needs macOS 11.5 or later and was last updated on 16 June 2026. They are sold side by side, one free and one paid, and the free one is not a crippled trial of the paid one. It is an older, smaller app that is still maintained.

Homebrew adds one more wrinkle worth knowing. The cask named copyclip installs CopyClip 2.app, not the free one, and the cask page lists its version as 3.993 with auto updates. Anyone who runs the one line install expecting the free app gets the paid one, which then asks to be licensed.

What CopyClip 2 does in a working day

The core loop is the one every app in this category has: it records what gets copied in the background, and a global shortcut opens the list. FIPLAB's page describes the history as keeping up to hundreds of clips and covering text, links and code snippets. No exact ceiling is published, which is worth noting for anyone who wants a guaranteed retention figure.

Three features are the ones that change a day rather than a feature list.

Pinned clips with a number key. Items pinned to the top of the list get Command plus a number, so a signature block, an SSH public key or a standard reply pastes without anything being read or chosen. For most people this, and not the history itself, is the feature they end up using forty times a day.

Paste directly. Selecting a clip pastes it into the frontmost app rather than only putting it back on the system clipboard, so the second keystroke disappears. The page also lists a second global shortcut that opens the history as a compact pop up menu wherever the cursor already is, which on a large display is the difference between the eyes travelling and not travelling.

Source tracking and preview. Each clip records which app it came from and shows it, which turns a list of six near identical URLs into a list of six identifiable items. Pressing the Space bar gives a Quick Look style preview, the same gesture the Finder uses, so a clip can be checked before it lands in a client facing field.

The rest of the list is sensible rather than remarkable: themes, adjustable history limits, exclusion rules, plain text pasting as a global toggle, editable clips with custom names, and a native AppKit build rather than a web wrapper.

What the free CopyClip covers, and what macOS now covers

The free app records clipboard history and lets it be recalled from the menu bar. That is genuinely the whole product, and for a loss that happens once or twice a week it is enough.

The relevant change is that the Mac itself now does some of this. Apple's Mac User Guide page Find what you need with Spotlight on Mac lists clipboard history among the things Spotlight can return, described as searching text and files previously copied to the clipboard to find something copied earlier. Spotlight opens with Command and the Space bar, which means the recall path is already under the fingers with nothing installed.

Two limits are worth being precise about. It is a search box, not an ordered list, so it suits the case where the wanted item can be described rather than the case where six clips need pasting in sequence. And Apple does not publish how long that history is kept, so any retention figure quoted for it comes from somewhere other than Apple.

The honest recommendation is therefore to try Spotlight for a few days before installing anything. The people for whom it is not enough tend to know within a day, because they hit one of the limits in the next section.

Price, requirements and how to install it

App	Price	Requires	Sold through
Spotlight clipboard history	Included	A recent macOS	Part of macOS
CopyClip	Free	macOS 10.13 or later	Mac App Store
CopyClip 2	$7.99 once	macOS 11.5 or later	Mac App Store, trial build on fiplab.com, Homebrew cask copyclip
Maccy	Free from GitHub, $9.99 on the Mac App Store	macOS 14 or later	GitHub, Mac App Store, Homebrew
ClipBook	$9.99 one Mac, $14.99 two, $29.99 five	macOS 13 or later	Own site, Homebrew cask clipbook
Paste	$29.99 per year, about $2.49 per month	Current macOS	Own site, Mac App Store, Setapp
PasteBar	Free	Mac and Windows	Own site, open source

All figures are in US dollars before tax. Two of them move soon or vary by route. ClipBook's own page states that its price rises in October 2026, with the listed increase taking the single Mac licence to $14.99. Paste is included in a Setapp membership, which starts at $14.99 per month for the Mac plan, so anyone already paying for Setapp has Paste already.

On a single Mac, CopyClip 2 at $7.99 once is the cheapest paid option in the category. That is the real argument for it. A lifetime licence from ClipBook costs more, a Paste subscription costs more every year, and Maccy from the App Store costs more, although Maccy from GitHub costs nothing at all under an MIT licence.

Requirements matter more than price for older hardware. A Mac that cannot run macOS 13 rules out ClipBook, and a Mac that cannot run macOS 14 rules out Maccy. CopyClip 2 at macOS 11.5, and the free CopyClip at macOS 10.13, reach further back than anything else in this list.

Where CopyClip stops

Three jobs are not on CopyClip 2's published feature list, and each one sends a certain kind of user elsewhere.

Ordered pasting. Selecting several clips once and then pasting them one after another, each paste advancing to the next, is the single most useful capability for anyone moving rows between two web apps or filling a five field form. ClipBook documents it two ways, either joining several selected items with a chosen separator or pasting in sequence with a shortcut that never opens a window, and Paste supports pasting several items as well. On CopyClip 2, a five field form is still five visits to the history.

Transforming a clip. ClipBook publishes 78 text transformation options, merging several text items into one, splitting a multi line item so each line can be pasted separately, appending a new copy to the previous item with a double press of the copy shortcut, and extracting text from an image already in history. None of that is on CopyClip 2's list. It stores clips faithfully rather than editing them.

Reaching a phone. CopyClip 2 is a Mac app. Paste is sold as one licence covering Mac, iPhone and iPad and syncs through the user's own iCloud. If the recurring annoyance is something copied on a phone and wanted on the Mac, that single requirement settles the choice before anything else is compared.

None of these absences is a flaw. A small app that does recall and pinning well, for one payment, on an eight year old Mac, is a coherent product. The mistake is buying it expecting the other three jobs.

The settings to change on the first launch

A clipboard history is a log of everything typed into a copy command, which over a working week includes passwords, API tokens and recovery codes. CopyClip 2 lists three relevant mechanisms, and all three are worth setting before the first real use rather than after the first scare.

Private Mode pauses recording, which is the switch to reach for before working in a password vault or a billing console. Exclusion rules keep named apps from contributing to history at all, and the list that matters is short: the password manager, the banking site, the terminal if secrets get pasted through it. And the page lists automatically skipping concealed and sensitive fields, so a field the owning app marks as secret never enters the history in the first place.

One behaviour to check on any app in this category, because it separates the careful ones: whether an item is dropped from history when the app that put it there clears the clipboard. Maccy states on its own site that when a password manager removes a copied password from the clipboard, Maccy removes it too. That is the correct design, because the app that owns the secret decides when the secret expires.

Also decide whether history should survive a restart. On a Mac that travels, clearing on quit is the right default. On a machine that never leaves a desk and has one user, it is not.

When the clipboard was never the problem

Here is the failure that sends people looking for a better clipboard tool when the clipboard is working perfectly.

Two Gmail accounts are open, a work one and a client one. An address is copied out of the client thread, the wrong window comes forward, and the address lands in the wrong draft. Or a Figma link is copied out of Slack, the link opens in the window signed in as the personal account, and the file is not there. Nothing was lost. The right text went into the wrong session.

No clipboard history helps with that, because the history was never the weak link. What was missing was a boundary between the accounts. The usual attempts on a Mac are browser profiles, which work but move the burden onto remembering which window is which, and one private window per extra account, which loses the session the moment it closes.

The alternative is to stop treating accounts as tabs. A browser that keeps each web app in its own window with its own cookie container lets three Gmail accounts stay signed in at once without any of them being aware of the others, and opens a link in the session that owns it. The two problems then stay separate, which is the point: a clipboard tool is asked to remember, and workspaces are asked to keep things apart. Trying to solve the second with the first is what makes people conclude no clipboard app is good enough.

What to change first

Open Spotlight and check how much of the last hour it already gives back, because that answer decides whether anything needs buying. If it is not enough and the daily pain is retyping the same few snippets, CopyClip 2 at $7.99 once is the cheapest route to pinned clips on a number key, and the free CopyClip is worth a day first on any Mac too old for it. If the pain is that pastes keep landing in the wrong account, spend the money on separation instead and see where SpaceDeck draws the line on its free plan.