What is a clipboard manager on macOS?

A clipboard manager records what you copy so you can paste something from earlier, not only the last item. macOS keeps exactly one clipboard entry; a clipboard manager keeps a history of them and lets you search it. Clipbin stores that history in the menu bar and adds a permanent Vault for items you want to keep.

Yes. Clipbin is free and open source, with no account, no subscription and no in-app purchase. You can install it with Homebrew or build it from source.

How do I see clipboard history on a Mac?

macOS has no built-in clipboard history, so you need a clipboard manager. With Clipbin installed, press Control-Shift-V for the history popover or Control-Shift-Space for the search panel, then press Return to copy the item you picked.

Clipbin — Free Clipboard Manager for macOS with History

Q: Does Clipbin need Accessibility or Input Monitoring permission?

No. Its global shortcuts are Carbon RegisterEventHotKey registrations rather than event monitors, so macOS does not ask for Input Monitoring or Accessibility access.

What Clipbin is

Clipbin is a free, open-source clipboard manager for macOS 14 and later. macOS remembers exactly one thing you copied; Clipbin remembers the last 20 to 200 and lets you search them. It lives in the menu bar with no Dock icon and no main window. Anything you want to keep permanently — a snippet, a screenshot, a file — goes into the Vault by bookmarking it or dragging it onto the menu-bar icon. Copies that a password manager marks as concealed are never recorded.

See it work

Copy, search the history, then drag an image straight from a web page onto the menu-bar icon.

Recorded with ./record-demo.sh from the repository.

What it does

Clipboard history

The last 20, 50, 100 or 200 copies, your pick. A copied screenshot costs kilobytes of RAM, not megabytes — the full image sits on disk and only a 160px thumbnail stays in memory.

A permanent Vault

History is wiped at every launch. The Vault is not. Bookmark a row or drag anything onto the menu-bar icon, and it stays until you remove it.

Spotlight-shaped search

⌃⇧Space opens a panel over whatever is on screen. Type to narrow, arrows to move, ⏎ to copy and get out of the way.

Passwords stay out

Clipbin honours the nspasteboard.org convention, so anything a password manager marks concealed is never recorded. On by default.

Findable from Spotlight

Optionally indexes the Vault — never the history — into the system index, so ⌘Space finds a saved snippet and ⏎ copies it.

Everything drags out

Text leaves as text and images leave as their real file, so the app you drop into sees an image rather than a path.

Try the drag

With Clipbin running, drag this onto the clipboard icon in your menu bar.

Draggable sample image for testing Clipbin's Vault

It lands in the Vault as a real image file and stays there — history limits do not apply to it.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/labs-conceptmates/clipbin/main/install.sh | bash

One command, no clone. It downloads the latest release, replaces any running copy, and launches it. Prefer Homebrew?

brew install --cask labs-conceptmates/tap/clipbin

Or download the latest .zip from Releases, unzip it, and drag Clipbin.app to Applications. To build from source:

git clone https://github.com/labs-conceptmates/clipbin.git
cd clipbin
./install.sh

Run from a checkout, install.sh builds from source instead of downloading — you install exactly what you are looking at.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	What it does
`⌃⇧V`	Open the clipboard history popover
`⌃⇧Space`	Open the search panel over the current app
`⏎`	Copy the selected item and close
`⇥`	Switch between All, Text, Images and Vault

Both global shortcuts are rebindable in Settings. They are Carbon RegisterEventHotKey registrations rather than event monitors, which is why Clipbin asks for no Input Monitoring or Accessibility permission.

How Clipbin compares

	Clipbin	macOS alone	Typical paid manager
Price	Free, open source	Included	$10–$30 or a subscription
Clipboard history	20–200 items	1 item	Unlimited
Permanent saved items	Vault, unlimited	None	Usually
Dock icon	None, menu bar only	—	Varies
Skips password-manager copies	Yes, by default	—	Usually optional
Accessibility permission	Not required	—	Often required
Account or cloud sync	Neither	—	Often required

Nothing leaves the machine. Clipbin has no server, no analytics and no network code.

Questions

Is Clipbin free?

Yes. Clipbin is free and open source, with no account, no subscription and no in-app purchase. Install it with Homebrew or build it from source.

Does macOS have a built-in clipboard history?

No. macOS keeps exactly one clipboard entry, which is why a clipboard manager is needed to paste something you copied earlier. The Finder's Edit → Show Clipboard shows only that single current item.

Does a clipboard manager record my passwords?

Clipbin does not. It honours the nspasteboard.org convention, so any copy a password manager marks as concealed is skipped and never written to history or to disk. The behaviour is on by default and can be turned off in Settings if you need it.

What is the difference between the history and the Vault?

History is temporary: it holds your last 20 to 200 copies and is wiped every time Clipbin launches. The Vault is permanent: anything you bookmark or drag onto the menu-bar icon stays until you delete it, and it does not count against the history limit.

How do I save an image from a web page into Clipbin?

Drag the image straight from the page onto the Clipbin icon in the menu bar, or into the search panel. It is stored in the Vault as a real image file, so dragging it back out gives the receiving app an image rather than a URL.

Does Clipbin need Accessibility or Input Monitoring permission?

No. Its global shortcuts are Carbon RegisterEventHotKey registrations rather than event monitors, so macOS never prompts for those permissions.

Which macOS versions are supported?

macOS 14 Sonoma and later, on both Apple silicon and Intel — the release build is a universal binary.

Where is the source code?

At github.com/labs-conceptmates/clipbin. It is a Swift and SwiftUI app that builds with a single shell script and no package dependencies.