The Best Free Clipboard Manager for Mac in 2026, Honestly Compared
Free clipboard managers on Mac split into three kinds, and only one of them stays useful long term. A straight comparison of Maccy, PasteBar, Raycast, and the built-in history.
Short answer: Maccy is the best free clipboard manager for Mac in 2026. It is open source under the MIT licence, keeps an unlimited searchable history entirely on your Mac, and is actively maintained. PasteBar is the stronger free choice if you want saved clips and boards, and macOS already ships a temporary clipboard history inside Spotlight.
Key facts
- Maccy is MIT licensed, free from maccy.app, Homebrew, or the Mac App Store, and stores history locally.
- PasteBar is free and open source, runs on macOS and Windows, and adds collections, boards, and saved clips.
- The built-in Spotlight history is reached with Command-Space then Command-4, with retention set to 30 minutes, 8 hours, or 7 days.
- Raycast includes Clipboard History at no cost. Alfred puts its clipboard history behind the paid Powerpack.
- Every free option here is Mac only. None of them put a snippet on your iPhone.
“Free clipboard manager for Mac” is one query covering three very different products: the history macOS already has, a genuinely free open source app, and the free tier of a launcher you may already run. They fail in different places, so the right pick depends on which failure you can live with.
Does macOS have a clipboard manager built in?
Yes, and most people never find it. Recent macOS versions keep a clipboard history inside Spotlight. Press Command-Space to open Spotlight, then Command-4 to switch to the clipboard section. Double-click an entry to paste it, or send it back to the clipboard for a normal Command-V.
It handles recent text and images, and pasting from it drops formatting, which is quietly useful. In System Settings under Spotlight you choose how long entries live: 30 minutes, 8 hours, or 7 days, with a button to clear on demand.
The limits are the point, though. Everything expires on the schedule you picked, there is no pinning, and there are no categories. It answers “what did I copy ten minutes ago” and never “give me the block I paste every Monday”. We went deeper on the built-in history and its edges in clipboard history on Mac.
Which free Mac clipboard managers are actually worth installing?
Four are worth your time, and one common recommendation is not.
- Maccy. The default answer. Open source under MIT, unlimited searchable history, keyboard driven, tiny, and it stores everything on your machine. It also respects password managers: if your password manager clears a copied password from the clipboard, Maccy drops it too. Source is public at github.com/p0deje/Maccy.
- PasteBar. Free and open source, macOS and Windows. It goes further than a history: custom clips, collections, tabs and boards, syntax highlighting for code, and a lock screen with a passcode. Closest thing to a free snippet library on the Mac.
- CopyClip. Free on the Mac App Store, lives in the menu bar, plain text focused. No frills, and that is the appeal for some people.
- Raycast Clipboard History. Included free with Raycast. If Raycast is already your launcher, you have a clipboard manager and did not know it.
- Flycut and Jumpcut. Both free and open source, both essentially unmaintained. Text only, dated interfaces. Fine if you already run one, a poor thing to newly adopt on a platform that changes every autumn.
Alfred belongs in a footnote here. Its clipboard history is real and good, but it lives behind the paid Powerpack, so Alfred is not a free answer to this question.
Free Mac clipboard managers compared
| Maccy | PasteBar | CopyClip | Raycast | Spotlight (built in) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, MIT | Free, open source | Free | Free tier | Included |
| History | Unlimited, searchable | Unlimited, searchable | Recent text | Recent items | 30 min to 7 days |
| Saved clips you keep | No | Yes, boards and collections | No | No | No |
| Images | Yes | Yes | Text focused | Yes | Yes |
| Storage | Local | Local | Local | Local | Local |
| Reaches iPhone or iPad | No | No | No | No | No |
| Actively maintained | Yes | Yes | Light | Yes | Yes |
What do you give up by staying free?
Three things, and it is worth being honest about which of them you care about.
A permanent library. Every free option here is a rolling history. It answers what you copied recently. None of them are designed to hold the twelve things you paste every week, organised, with the ones you use most at the top. PasteBar’s boards get closest.
The rest of your devices. This is the big one. Maccy, PasteBar, CopyClip, and Raycast all stop at the Mac, because macOS lets an app watch the clipboard continuously and iOS does not. Copy a client address on your Mac and it is not on your iPhone unless Universal Clipboard happens to be working in that moment.
Maintenance. Free and open source is only as good as its maintainer. Maccy and PasteBar are active. Flycut and Jumpcut are not, and an unmaintained menu bar app is a bad bet on macOS.
Is a free clipboard history enough for you?
It depends which of these describes you.
- You want to undo a copy you overwrote. The built-in Spotlight history is enough. Install nothing.
- You want fast keyboard access to the last hundred copies on one Mac. Maccy, and you are done.
- You want to keep code snippets, templates, and boilerplate organised. PasteBar free, or a snippet library if you want it on your phone too.
- You want the same saved text on your Mac and your iPhone. No free Mac clipboard manager does this. That is a different category of tool.
That last case is where free stops being a strategy. A Mac-only history cannot help when you are replying to a customer on your phone.
Where a paid app is honestly worth it
Paying buys three things that free Mac tools do not offer: coverage across your phone and tablet, a curated library rather than a rolling history, and someone with a commercial reason to keep the app working next September.
CopyAgain is in that group, and it is not free. It is a $9.99 one-time unlock, no subscription, covering iPhone, iPad, and a Mac menu bar app, with a Sensitive vault behind Face ID and sync through your own iCloud rather than our servers. Its model is also different from Maccy’s: it saves what you choose to keep, so nothing silently records your clipboard. If your problem is only “what did I just copy on this Mac”, Maccy is free and excellent, and you should use it. If your problem is “I retype the same things on my phone all day”, a history on one machine will not fix it.
For the paid landscape more broadly, Paste and its alternatives and one-time versus subscription pricing cover what the money actually buys.
What to do next
- Try the built-in Spotlight history first. Command-Space, Command-4. It costs nothing to check.
- If you want a real history on your Mac, install Maccy from maccy.app or
brew install --cask maccy. - If you want saved clips and boards for free, install PasteBar instead.
- Skip Flycut and Jumpcut for a new setup. They are unmaintained.
- If your snippets need to exist on your phone as well, budget for a cross-device tool rather than stacking free Mac apps.
FAQ
What is the best free clipboard manager for Mac?
Maccy, for most people. It is open source under the MIT licence, stores everything locally, has unlimited searchable history, and is actively maintained. PasteBar is the better pick if you want saved clips and boards rather than just a history of recent copies.
Does macOS have a clipboard manager built in?
Sort of. Recent macOS versions put a clipboard history inside Spotlight. Press Command-Space, then Command-4. It holds recent text and images and you choose whether entries live for 30 minutes, 8 hours, or 7 days. It is a temporary history, not a library.
Is Maccy really free?
Yes. Maccy is open source under the MIT licence and the source is public on GitHub. You can install it from maccy.app, through Homebrew, or from the Mac App Store. Everything it records stays on your Mac.
Is Raycast’s clipboard history good enough?
If you already use Raycast, yes, for recent copies. Clipboard History is included at no cost and searches text, images, and links. It is still a rolling history tied to one Mac, so it does not solve reusing the same snippet on your iPhone.
What do free Mac clipboard managers not do?
Three things, usually. They stop at the Mac, so nothing reaches your iPhone or iPad. They record recent copies rather than a curated library you keep forever. And the older free options are unmaintained, which matters on a platform that changes every September.
CopyAgain is the paid end of this list, a one-time $9.99 unlock that keeps your saved snippets on iPhone, iPad, and Mac without a subscription or a server.