# Clipbin

> A free, open-source clipboard manager for macOS 14 and later. It keeps a searchable history of
> what you copy in the menu bar, and a permanent Vault for anything you drag onto its icon. No Dock
> icon, no account, no subscription, no network code.

Clipbin is written in Swift and SwiftUI, builds from a single shell script with no package
dependencies, and runs as an `LSUIElement` agent — a menu-bar item with no Dock tile and no main
window. It is published by Conceptmates Labs at https://github.com/labs-conceptmates/clipbin.

## Facts

- Price: free. Open source. No account, no subscription, no in-app purchase.
- Platform: macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Universal binary, Apple silicon and Intel.
- Install: `brew install --cask labs-conceptmates/tap/clipbin`, or `./install.sh` from a clone.
- History size: the last 20, 50, 100 or 200 copies, chosen in Settings. Wiped at every launch.
- Vault: permanent, unlimited, does not count against the history limit, survives restarts.
- Shortcuts: `Control-Shift-V` opens the history popover, `Control-Shift-Space` opens the search
  panel. Both are rebindable.
- Permissions: none. Shortcuts use Carbon `RegisterEventHotKey`, not event monitors, so macOS does
  not prompt for Accessibility or Input Monitoring.
- Privacy: honours the nspasteboard.org concealed-type convention, so copies marked concealed by a
  password manager are never recorded. On by default. Nothing leaves the machine.
- Memory: a copied image keeps a 160px thumbnail in memory and the original bytes on disk, so a
  screenshot in history costs kilobytes of RAM rather than megabytes.

## Answers to common questions

- **Does macOS have built-in clipboard history?** No. macOS keeps exactly one clipboard entry, which
  is why a clipboard manager is needed to paste something copied earlier.
- **Difference between history and Vault?** History is temporary and capped, and is wiped every
  launch. The Vault is permanent and uncapped; items get there by bookmarking or by being dragged
  onto the menu-bar icon.
- **Does it record passwords?** No. Concealed copies are skipped before anything is written.
- **How do I save a web image?** Drag it from the page onto the menu-bar icon. It is stored as a
  real image file, so dragging it back out hands the receiving app an image, not a URL.

## Links

- Home: https://labs-conceptmates.github.io/clipbin/
- Source: https://github.com/labs-conceptmates/clipbin
- Releases: https://github.com/labs-conceptmates/clipbin/releases/latest
- Homebrew cask: https://github.com/labs-conceptmates/clipbin/blob/main/Casks/clipbin.rb