The Best Clipboard Managers for Mac in 2026

Last year, the Mac gained a built-in clipboard manager, which means macOS can finally remember everything you’ve copied. This feature is disabled by default, but it’s easy to enable to keep track of the text, photos, and other files in your clipboard. The catch is that you need to be running macOS 26 Tahoe to use the built-in clipboard manager, which isn’t an option for those with older Macs. What’s more, Apple’s implementation of the clipboard manager is basic. While it works well for most, if you need more features, you’re going to have to use third-party alternatives. Luckily, there are plenty of excellent choices.

Spotlight Search: The Best Clipboard Manager for Most People

Not everyone needs an advanced clipboard manager. For most people, an app that does the basics is good enough, and it’s even better if that app ships with your Mac. As long as your Mac is running macOS 26 Tahoe, you can use the built-in clipboard manager. I wrote about using Spotlight as your clipboard manager, and it’s been super convenient. You need to enable it by going to System Settings > Spotlight > Results from Clipboard, but after that, you’re all set. Spotlight will log everything you copy, except sensitive information such as passwords. You can then access all of your clipboard entries by pressing Command-Space (or clicking that magnifying glass in your Mac’s menu bar) and then Command-4.

This feature is good enough to get started with clipboard management, but it doesn’t sync clipboard history across devices or support features like categorizing copied items by type. If you need advanced features to speed up your workflow, you’ll have to rely on third-party apps. It’s also worth noting that if you use Spotlight alternatives such as Alfred or Raycast, those apps ship with clipboard managers, too. You don’t have to switch back to Spotlight just for this feature.

Maccy: A Simple, Free Clipboard Manager for Older Macs

If you can’t install macOS Tahoe on your Mac, or if you use an older Mac that isn’t supported any longer, you can download Maccy to get a fast, free, and open-source clipboard manager that’s just as good as Apple’s built-in feature. Maccy is a lightweight menu bar app that displays clipboard history when you click its icon. It also lets you quickly search through your clipboard entries and functions reliably without getting in the way of your work. Plus, you can set up a list of applications to ignore, which means that you can stop it from storing data when you copy from sensitive apps such as Slack or Microsoft Teams, among others.

• Download: Maccy (free via GitHub, also available for $10 on the Mac App Store, or for $5 via Gumroad).

PastePal: A Great Paid Clipboard Manager

I bought PastePal a year ago, and it has served me well ever since. This app is available as a one-time purchase at a reasonable price, and it has pretty much every feature you could ask for. In addition to basic clipboard management, it lets you automatically remove tracking URLs from links, or transform text between uppercase and lowercase. It also lets you edit items you’ve copied, which makes life a lot easier when you’ve accidentally copied a few extra characters with your text.

PastePal also supports sequential paste, which means that you can copy a bunch of items and paste them one-by-one. This is great for speeding up repetitive tasks such as copying from one window and pasting in another. The app’s interface takes some getting used to, but once you’re familiar with it, PastePal is one of the most capable clipboard managers available for Mac.