Paste
Paste stores everything a user copies across Mac, iPhone, and iPad as a searchable visual history, syncs it via private iCloud, and lets users organise frequently reused items into custom Pinboards for instant retrieval.
Nothing you copy ever disappears again — and it follows you from Mac to iPhone to iPad.
Paste is a clipboard manager for Mac, iPhone, and iPad that has been actively developed since 2015, making it one of the earliest dedicated clipboard tools built specifically for Apple devices. Rather than the single-item clipboard built into macOS and iOS — where copying something new erases whatever was copied before — Paste keeps an unlimited, searchable history of everything copied, displayed as a visual timeline of cards showing text previews, image thumbnails, and link favicons.
The standout feature is Pinboards: custom collections where frequently reused snippets, links, colours, and images can be saved and organised by project or category, then recalled instantly with a keyboard shortcut. iCloud sync keeps clipboard history perfectly in step across Mac, iPhone, and iPad — something copied on a laptop an hour ago is immediately available on the phone. Power Search finds anything ever copied, including text inside screenshots and photos via Apple Intelligence OCR, added in November 2025.
Paste 6, launched in September 2025, brought a full visual redesign, and the June 2026 update introduced Paste MCP, connecting clipboard history directly to AI tools like Claude, Codex, and Cursor. The app is privacy-first: data is stored locally and synced only through the user’s own private iCloud, never sent to Paste’s own servers, with rules available to automatically exclude passwords and sensitive content. Pricing is $2.49–$3.99 per month or $29.99 per year, with a free trial and inclusion in the Setapp bundle.
Apps are frequently updated and may change over time. While we aim to keep our reviews accurate and up to date, some information may become outdated or no longer reflect the current version.
Disclaimer ▽ (click open)
How to Use
After installing Paste on Mac, iPhone, or iPad, the app runs quietly in the background — no manual action is required to start building history. Every time something is copied — text, an image, a link, a colour swatch, a file — Paste automatically captures it and adds it to a scrollable, visual timeline of cards. Text clips show a text preview, images show a thumbnail, and links display the source favicon, making it easy to recognise items at a glance without opening each one.
On Mac, Paste opens with a customisable keyboard shortcut, sliding up as an overlay that can be scrolled or searched. Recent items can be pasted instantly using ⌘1 through ⌘9 for the nine most recent clips. Paste Stack allows multiple items to be queued in a specific order and pasted sequentially — useful for filling out repetitive forms. Items can also be pasted as plain text to strip formatting when needed.
Frequently reused items — email signatures, code snippets, hex colour codes, links — are saved into Pinboards, custom collections organised by project, client, or category that persist independently of the rolling clipboard history. Pinboards can be recalled with their own dedicated shortcuts. On iOS, the Paste Keyboard brings the full clipboard history directly into any app’s typing interface without switching apps. iCloud sync keeps everything consistent across devices in real time, and Power Search — including Apple Intelligence-powered OCR search inside screenshots and photos — finds anything ever copied by keyword, app, date, or content type.
Strongest Points:
✓ True cross-device iCloud sync between Mac, iPhone, and iPad — the one feature most competing clipboard managers still lack, making Paste genuinely useful for anyone who works across multiple Apple devices
✓ Pinboards provide persistent, organised storage for frequently reused snippets, separate from the rolling clipboard history, ideal for project-based or repetitive workflows
✓ Apple Intelligence OCR search finds text inside copied screenshots and images — a genuinely useful capability that turns visual clips into searchable content
✓ Decade of active development with regular substantial updates, including a full redesign in 2025 and AI tool integration in 2026, showing consistent long-term investment
✓ Privacy-first architecture — clipboard data stays local and syncs only through the user’s own private iCloud, never touching Paste’s own servers
Weaker Points:
✕ At $29.99 per year, Paste is one of the more expensive clipboard managers available, and the subscription model has drawn criticism from users who prefer a one-time purchase
✕ Mac and iOS only — there is no Windows or Android version, and no Apple Vision Pro support, which limits it for users working across mixed operating systems
✕ Heavier on system resources than minimalist alternatives like Maccy, which some users prefer specifically for their lighter footprint
✕ The visual, card-based interface is a deliberate design choice that can feel like overkill for users who just want a fast, no-frills text history
✕ The iPhone keyboard clipboard integration is more limited than some newer competitors, which offer one-tap custom snippets directly from the keyboard rather than a scrollable history view
How to Use
After installing Paste on Mac, iPhone, or iPad, the app runs quietly in the background — no manual action is required to start building history. Every time something is copied — text, an image, a link, a colour swatch, a file — Paste automatically captures it and adds it to a scrollable, visual timeline of cards. Text clips show a text preview, images show a thumbnail, and links display the source favicon, making it easy to recognise items at a glance without opening each one.
On Mac, Paste opens with a customisable keyboard shortcut, sliding up as an overlay that can be scrolled or searched. Recent items can be pasted instantly using ⌘1 through ⌘9 for the nine most recent clips. Paste Stack allows multiple items to be queued in a specific order and pasted sequentially — useful for filling out repetitive forms. Items can also be pasted as plain text to strip formatting when needed.
Frequently reused items — email signatures, code snippets, hex colour codes, links — are saved into Pinboards, custom collections organised by project, client, or category that persist independently of the rolling clipboard history. Pinboards can be recalled with their own dedicated shortcuts. On iOS, the Paste Keyboard brings the full clipboard history directly into any app’s typing interface without switching apps. iCloud sync keeps everything consistent across devices in real time, and Power Search — including Apple Intelligence-powered OCR search inside screenshots and photos — finds anything ever copied by keyword, app, date, or content type.
Strongest Points:
✓ True cross-device iCloud sync between Mac, iPhone, and iPad — the one feature most competing clipboard managers still lack, making Paste genuinely useful for anyone who works across multiple Apple devices
✓ Pinboards provide persistent, organised storage for frequently reused snippets, separate from the rolling clipboard history, ideal for project-based or repetitive workflows
✓ Apple Intelligence OCR search finds text inside copied screenshots and images — a genuinely useful capability that turns visual clips into searchable content
✓ Decade of active development with regular substantial updates, including a full redesign in 2025 and AI tool integration in 2026, showing consistent long-term investment
✓ Privacy-first architecture — clipboard data stays local and syncs only through the user’s own private iCloud, never touching Paste’s own servers
Weaker Points:
✕ At $29.99 per year, Paste is one of the more expensive clipboard managers available, and the subscription model has drawn criticism from users who prefer a one-time purchase
✕ Mac and iOS only — there is no Windows or Android version, and no Apple Vision Pro support, which limits it for users working across mixed operating systems
✕ Heavier on system resources than minimalist alternatives like Maccy, which some users prefer specifically for their lighter footprint
✕ The visual, card-based interface is a deliberate design choice that can feel like overkill for users who just want a fast, no-frills text history
✕ The iPhone keyboard clipboard integration is more limited than some newer competitors, which offer one-tap custom snippets directly from the keyboard rather than a scrollable history view
Use it For:
💻 Apple users who regularly move between Mac, iPhone, and iPad and want their clipboard history to genuinely follow them across every device
🎨 Designers and developers who copy hex colours, code snippets, and reference images repeatedly and want them organised into project-based Pinboards
✍️ Writers and researchers who paste the same links, quotes, or reference material often and want fast, searchable recall rather than retyping or re-finding things
🔍 Anyone who copies screenshots of receipts, documents, or text-heavy images and wants that content to become searchable later through OCR
🤖 Developers and AI power users who want their clipboard history and saved snippets accessible directly inside AI coding tools like Claude, Cursor, or Codex
App Usable on:
Phone
Tablet
PC
TV
Applications and Features
Paste’s core is an unlimited clipboard history displayed as a visual timeline of cards — text clips show content previews, images show thumbnails, and links display favicons and titles, making it easy to identify items without opening them individually. Rules can be configured to automatically skip capturing passwords and other sensitive content from specific apps.
Power Search is the app’s standout discovery tool, supporting predictive suggestions as text is typed, filtering by app, device, content type, and date, and — since the November 2025 Apple Intelligence update — OCR search inside screenshots and photos, so a copied receipt or document image becomes searchable by the text it contains. Pinboards organise frequently reused items into named collections recalled by custom shortcut, and Shared Pinboards, added in 2025, extend this to small teams collaborating on curated snippet collections synced across multiple Macs and iOS devices.
Paste Stack queues multiple clipboard items in sequence for repetitive pasting tasks like filling out forms. Items can be pasted as plain text to strip formatting. On iOS, the Paste Keyboard extension brings full clipboard history into any app’s typing field, and Handoff integration continues copy/paste tasks seamlessly between iPhone and Mac. Paste MCP, introduced in June 2026, connects Paste to AI tools including Claude, Codex, and Cursor through a local MCP server, letting AI assistants search and use clipboard history and saved Pinboard context with granular, locally authenticated permissions. Widget support gives Home Screen access to pinned or recent items, and drag-and-drop lets clips be dropped directly into any macOS app.
▽ Gadgets Related to this App ▽
App Summary
Paste has earned its reputation as the clipboard manager that convinced a generation of Mac users that clipboard history was worth paying for, and a decade later it remains one of the very few tools in the category that does the two hardest things at once: keeping a genuinely useful searchable history and syncing it reliably across Mac, iPhone, and iPad. That combination is harder to build well than it sounds, and most competitors still only solve one half of the problem.
The Pinboards feature is what turns Paste from a passive history log into an active organisational tool, and it is consistently the feature long-term users cite as the reason they stayed subscribed. The addition of Apple Intelligence OCR search and Paste MCP for AI tool integration shows a development team still finding meaningful ways to extend the core product rather than coasting on an established reputation.
The $29.99 annual price is a legitimate objection for users who only need basic clipboard history, and cheaper or free alternatives exist for that narrower need. But for anyone whose workflow genuinely spans multiple Apple devices and benefits from organised, searchable, permanent access to everything they’ve ever copied, Paste remains one of the most polished and reliable options in its category.
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Paste costs $2.49–$3.99 per month or $29.99 per year as a single subscription covering Mac, iPhone, and iPad. A 7-day free trial is available before billing begins. Paste is also included in Setapp at $9.99 per month, which bundles access to 200+ other Mac and iOS apps alongside it. There is no permanent free tier and no one-time purchase option.
Learning Difficulty:
Basic clipboard history works automatically from installation with no configuration needed, while getting the most out of Pinboards, Power Search, and Paste Stack takes only a few minutes to learn thanks to the app’s intuitive, native-feeling interface.
Required Skill Sets:
Educational Content:
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1/4
Questions & Answers: ⮛ (click to open)
How is Paste different from Apple’s built-in Universal Clipboard?
Universal Clipboard only carries the single most recent item copied between Apple devices, and it disappears once something new is copied. Paste keeps an unlimited, permanent, searchable history of everything copied on every device, syncs it all via iCloud, and lets items be organised into persistent Pinboards. Even macOS 26 Tahoe’s new built-in Spotlight clipboard history is limited — it’s off by default, Mac-only with no iPhone sync, and clears items after a set window of up to 7 days.
Is my clipboard data private and secure with Paste?
Yes. Paste stores clipboard data locally on the device and syncs it only through the user’s own private iCloud account — it is never sent to Paste’s own servers. Rules can be configured to automatically exclude passwords and other sensitive content from being captured at all, adding a layer of protection for apps that handle confidential information.
What are Pinboards and how are they different from regular clipboard history?
Regular clipboard history is a rolling, chronological log of everything recently copied — older items eventually fall further down the list. Pinboards are separate, permanent collections that users deliberately curate, organising frequently reused items like email signatures, code snippets, or reference links by project or category. Pinboards do not get pushed out by new clipboard activity and can be recalled instantly with a dedicated keyboard shortcut.
Does Paste work on Windows or Android?
No. Paste is built exclusively for the Apple ecosystem — Mac, iPhone, and iPad. There is no Windows or Android version, and no Apple Vision Pro support at this time. Users needing a cross-platform clipboard manager that also works on Windows will need to look at alternatives like Ditto or CopyQ instead.
Good to Knows: ⮛ (click to open)
• A single Paste subscription covers all three platforms — Mac, iPhone, and iPad — rather than charging separately per device, which is worth factoring into any price comparison with competitors that only run on one platform.
• Paste is also accessible through the Setapp bundle at $9.99 per month, which may work out more cost-effective for users who would also use several of the 200+ other apps included in that subscription.
• Paste MCP, added in June 2026, allows AI coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex to search and use clipboard history directly, with local authentication and granular permissions keeping full control over what the AI can access.
Takeaways: ⮛ (click to open)
• Paste is the most complete clipboard manager for users whose workflow genuinely spans Mac, iPhone, and iPad — true iCloud sync remains its defining advantage over most competitors.
• Pinboards and Power Search (now with OCR image search) turn a simple clipboard history into a genuinely useful personal knowledge and snippet organisation system.
• Users who only need basic single-device clipboard history and are price-sensitive should weigh Paste’s $29.99 annual cost against lighter, cheaper, or free alternatives like Maccy before committing.
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