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Maccy
Lightweight clipboard manager for macOS
System UtilitiesFreeOpen SourceReplaces Paste ($30)
Maccy — Official Website
Quick Take: Maccy
4.8
Maccy stands out as an exemplary clipboard manager for macOS, perfectly balancing powerful features with a lightweight, privacy-focused design. Its keyboard-first approach, intelligent search, and seamless native integration make it an indispensable tool for anyone seeking to boost their productivity on a Mac. While lacking cross-device sync and requiring a modern macOS, its open-source nature and robust feature set make it a top recommendation for efficient clipboard management.
Best For
- •macOS users prioritizing speed and efficiency
- •Developers, writers, and power users who rely heavily on clipboard history
- •Individuals seeking a privacy-conscious, open-source productivity tool
Install with Homebrew
brew install --cask maccyWhat is Maccy?
Maccy is a lightweight, open-source clipboard manager designed exclusively for macOS. It efficiently maintains a searchable history of everything you copy, allowing for quick retrieval and reuse of past items. Built to be fast, efficient, and seamlessly integrated with the native macOS user interface, Maccy prioritizes a keyboard-first approach for minimal distraction, enhancing productivity for all users.
Deep Dive: Maccy's Evolution and Design Philosophy
Maccy represents a compelling example of a focused, open-source project that effectively addresses a common user need on macOS. Its development trajectory, architectural choices, and strong community engagement highlight why it has become a favored utility for many power users. The application's unwavering commitment to native integration and a keyboard-first approach underpins its reputation for speed and efficiency.
History & Background
Initiated as a response to the need for a simple, yet powerful, macOS-native clipboard manager, Maccy has steadily evolved through consistent updates. Key milestones in its recent history (2025-2026) include significant UI improvements for newer macOS versions like Tahoe (macOS 26), enhanced memory management, and crucial bug fixes. The introduction of features like OCR-based image search and showing original app sources demonstrates a commitment to expanding utility while maintaining core principles.
How It Works
Maccy's architecture is meticulously crafted for optimal performance and a minimal system footprint, leveraging native macOS frameworks to achieve seamless integration and responsiveness. As an open-source project, its codebase is transparent and publicly accessible, allowing for community contributions and rigorous peer review, which significantly contributes to its stability and security. The design prioritizes local data storage, reinforcing its privacy-centric philosophy by intentionally avoiding complex cloud synchronization layers.
Ecosystem & Integrations
The Maccy ecosystem is predominantly centered around its GitHub repository, acting as the primary hub for all development, issue tracking, and community interaction. Users can actively contribute translations, report bugs, and propose features, directly influencing its roadmap and future direction. While primarily a free tool, its presence on the Mac App Store provides a crucial avenue for financial support, allowing users to back the dedicated developer and ensure the project's long-term sustainability within the broader macOS utility landscape.
Future Development
Future development for Maccy is likely to continue its trajectory of enhancing core clipboard management features, improving compatibility with upcoming macOS versions, and refining the user experience based on community feedback. Potential areas for exploration might include more sophisticated smart pasting options, deeper integration with other macOS services, and further optimization for Apple Silicon. The transparent nature of its open-source model ensures that the community has significant visibility into and influence over its future direction.
Key Features
Comprehensive Clipboard History
Maccy diligently captures and stores a detailed history of all copied content, encompassing various types such as plain text, rich text, images (including HEIC previews), and web links. This extensive logging ensures users can always access previously copied items, providing a robust safety net for lost or forgotten clipboard data.
Intelligent Search and Filtering
The application offers powerful search capabilities, allowing users to rapidly find specific items within their vast clipboard history by typing keywords. It supports advanced search features like fuzzy matching and regular expressions, making it highly effective for retrieving even obscure snippets quickly and efficiently.
Keyboard-First Navigation
Optimized for speed and minimal distraction, Maccy is designed for primary keyboard control. Users can activate the manager, navigate through history, search, and paste content using customizable keyboard shortcuts, significantly reducing the need for mouse interaction and streamlining workflows.
Pinned Items & Shortcuts
For frequently used text snippets, images, or links, Maccy provides the ability to pin items to the top of the history list for instant access. These pinned items can also be assigned dedicated, custom keyboard shortcuts, transforming them into quick-access templates or common phrases.
Privacy-Focused Design
Maccy is built with user privacy as a core principle, ensuring sensitive information from password managers is automatically ignored and not stored. All clipboard data remains strictly local to your Mac, with no cloud synchronization, offering peace of mind regarding data security.
Native macOS UI Integration
The application seamlessly integrates with the macOS aesthetic and user experience, utilizing native design elements that make it feel like an inherent extension of the operating system. This attention to detail ensures a consistent and familiar interface for Mac users, enhancing usability and reducing learning curves.
Customizable Shortcuts and Preferences
Maccy offers extensive customization options, allowing users to tailor hotkeys, display settings, and other preferences to perfectly match their individual workflows and preferences. This flexibility ensures the application adapts to the user, rather than forcing a rigid interaction model.
Open Source & Lightweight
As an open-source project under the MIT license, Maccy provides complete transparency and freedom for users to inspect, modify, or contribute to its code. It is also renowned for its minimal system resource consumption and blazing-fast performance, ensuring it doesn't hinder system speed.
Who Should Use Maccy?
1Developer
A developer frequently copies code snippets, error messages, and API documentation links while coding. Maccy allows them to quickly access any of these past items from their history, search for specific code fragments, and paste them without interrupting their coding flow, significantly boosting productivity.
2Writer/Editor
A writer or editor is constantly moving text between documents, researching, and referencing sources. Maccy enables them to maintain a comprehensive history of paragraphs, quotes, and links, making it easy to retrieve and reuse content, or compare different versions without constant re-copying.
3Customer Support Agent
A customer support agent needs to quickly paste common responses, solution links, or diagnostic commands into chat windows or emails. With Maccy, they can pin frequently used replies for instant access via shortcuts, and search through recent customer information or troubleshooting steps, ensuring consistent and rapid service.
4Designer
A designer copies hex codes, image assets, font names, and design references across various applications. Maccy's ability to store images and rich text, along with its searchable history, allows them to effortlessly retrieve any design element or detail they've previously copied, streamlining their creative process.
5Researcher/Student
A researcher or student gathers information from multiple sources, copying excerpts, links, and data points. Maccy provides an invaluable tool for organizing this research, allowing them to search for specific keywords across their copied history, ensuring no crucial piece of information is lost and facilitating easy compilation.
How to Install Maccy
Maccy offers flexible installation methods for macOS users, catering to both those who prefer direct downloads and those who utilize the Mac App Store for application management and developer support.
1
Download from Official Website/GitHub
Visit the official Maccy website (maccy.app) or its GitHub repository to download the latest `.dmg` file. Once downloaded, open the disk image and drag the Maccy application icon into your Applications folder.
2
Install via Mac App Store
Alternatively, open the Mac App Store on your macOS device, search for 'Maccy', and purchase/download the application directly. This method offers easy updates and contributes to the project's development, supporting the maintainers.
3
Grant Accessibility Permissions
After launching Maccy for the first time, you will be prompted to grant it Accessibility permissions in your macOS System Settings (or System Preferences). This is crucial for Maccy to monitor your clipboard and function correctly. Navigate to 'Privacy & Security' > 'Accessibility' and enable Maccy.
Pro Tips
- • Set Maccy to launch automatically at login for continuous clipboard history tracking.
- • Familiarize yourself with the default keyboard shortcut (e.g., `Shift + Command + C`) to quickly access the clipboard history.
- • Explore Maccy's preferences to customize the number of items stored, appearance, and blacklist specific apps.
Configuration Tips
Customize Activation Shortcut
To ensure Maccy integrates seamlessly with your existing workflow, navigate to the application's preferences and assign a unique, easily accessible keyboard shortcut for activating the clipboard history window. Choosing a shortcut that doesn't conflict with other macOS or application commands is key for a fluid experience.
Manage History Retention
By default, Maccy might clear its history upon quitting. To maintain a permanent record of your copied items, explore the preferences to adjust the history retention settings. You can specify the number of items to keep or enable persistent storage, ensuring your valuable snippets are always available.
Blacklist Sensitive Applications
For enhanced privacy and to prevent capturing sensitive data, Maccy allows you to blacklist specific applications. Go to the 'Ignored Apps' section in preferences and add any applications, such as password managers or secure messaging apps, whose content you do not wish to be saved in your clipboard history.
Utilize Pinned Items and Dedicated Shortcuts
Leverage Maccy's powerful pinning feature for frequently used text, code, or image snippets. Pinning ensures these items always appear at the top of your history. For even quicker access, assign dedicated keyboard shortcuts to your most critical pinned items, transforming them into instant-paste commands.
Alternatives to Maccy
Several clipboard managers offer similar or expanded functionality for macOS, catering to different user preferences and needs:
C
CopyQ
CopyQ stands out as a free and open-source clipboard manager offering cross-platform support for Mac, Windows, and Linux. While Maccy focuses on macOS-native simplicity, CopyQ provides a more feature-rich, customizable interface and scripting capabilities, appealing to users needing advanced automation and multi-OS compatibility.
F
Flycut
Flycut is another open-source, lightweight clipboard manager for macOS, based on the Jumpcut project, focusing on simplicity and quick pasting via a keyboard shortcut. Compared to Maccy, Flycut offers a more minimalist feature set, primarily handling text history without advanced search, pinning, or image support, making Maccy a more comprehensive choice for varied content.
P
PasteBar
PasteBar is a free clipboard manager for Mac and Windows that emphasizes efficient organization and faster access to clipboard content. While both aim for quick retrieval, PasteBar often includes features like categorized pastes and visual previews, providing a different approach to content management than Maccy's keyboard-centric, search-heavy model.
C
CopyMagic
CopyMagic offers a premium, one-time license clipboard manager for macOS, distinguishing itself with semantic search and a guided recall flow, all while prioritizing local-first privacy and a fast native experience. Unlike Maccy's open-source, free-first approach, CopyMagic leverages AI-powered search for more intuitive item retrieval, catering to users who value advanced intelligence and are willing to pay.
Pricing
Freemium / Open-Source
Maccy is fundamentally free and open-source, available for direct download from its official website or GitHub under the MIT license. Users also have the option to purchase the application from the Mac App Store, which provides the exact same functionality but serves as a voluntary means to support the ongoing development and maintenance of the project. There are no tiered pricing models or hidden features; the core experience is consistent across both distribution channels.
Pros
- ✓Lightweight and blazing-fast performance, ensuring minimal system resource usage.
- ✓Open-source nature provides transparency, security, and community-driven development.
- ✓Comprehensive clipboard history supporting various content types, including images and rich text.
- ✓Keyboard-first design and customizable shortcuts for efficient, distraction-free operation.
- ✓Strong privacy focus with local data storage and automatic ignoring of sensitive password data.
- ✓Seamless integration with native macOS UI, making it feel like a natural system extension.
- ✓Intelligent search, fuzzy search, and regular expression support for rapid item retrieval.
Cons
- ✗Exclusively for macOS, limiting its utility for users on other operating systems.
- ✗No cloud synchronization by design, which might be a drawback for users needing cross-device clipboard access.
- ✗Requires macOS Sonoma 14 or higher, potentially excluding users on older macOS versions.
- ✗Default behavior clears history on app close, requiring configuration to retain history permanently.
- ✗While robust, it might lack some highly specialized features found in more comprehensive, paid managers.
Community & Ecosystem
Maccy thrives as a vibrant, community-driven project, with its core development centered around its GitHub repository. This open-source ecosystem encourages users to actively participate by reporting issues, suggesting new features, and even contributing code, fostering continuous improvement and innovation. The application enjoys high praise from its user base for its elegant simplicity and efficiency, frequently being recommended as an indispensable tool for enhancing macOS productivity. Furthermore, the option to purchase Maccy through the Mac App Store provides a direct and appreciated channel for users to financially support the dedicated developer behind this essential utility.
Video Tutorials
Getting Started with Maccy
OffBrown2.9K views
More Tutorials
Maccy - Install + tutorial on Mac - Free clipboard history manager for Macbook for easy Copy & Paste
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Frequently Asked Questions about Maccy
Yes, Maccy is an open-source application available for free download from its official website and GitHub. While it is free, users can also choose to purchase it from the Mac App Store, which serves as a donation to support the ongoing development efforts without adding extra features.
Our Verdict
4.8/5
Maccy stands out as an exemplary clipboard manager for macOS, perfectly balancing powerful features with a lightweight, privacy-focused design. Its keyboard-first approach, intelligent search, and seamless native integration make it an indispensable tool for anyone seeking to boost their productivity on a Mac. While lacking cross-device sync and requiring a modern macOS, its open-source nature and robust feature set make it a top recommendation for efficient clipboard management.
Best for:macOS users prioritizing speed and efficiencyDevelopers, writers, and power users who rely heavily on clipboard historyIndividuals seeking a privacy-conscious, open-source productivity tool
About the Author
Productivity & Workflow Analyst
Productivity ApplicationsNote-Taking & Knowledge ManagementTask & Project Management
8+ years in operations management · PMP certified
Related Technologies & Concepts
MaccymacOSClipboard ManagerOpen SourceMIT LicenseGitHubMac App StoremacOS Sonoma 14Apple SiliconIntelHEICOCRKeyboard ShortcutsPrivacy
Maccy (Primary application), macOS (Platform requirement), Clipboard Manager (Functionality), Open Source (Development model), MIT License (Specific license), GitHub (Community/Development hub), Mac App Store (Purchase/Support option), macOS Sonoma 14 (Minimum requirement), Apple Silicon (Supported architecture), Intel (Supported architecture), HEIC (Supported image format), OCR (Feature for image search), Keyboard Shortcuts (Core interaction method), Privacy (Design philosophy)
Related Topics
Clipboard Management
This cluster focuses on the core functionality of Maccy: efficiently storing, searching, and retrieving a history of copied content. It covers aspects like content types, history retention, and quick access mechanisms.
macOS Productivity Tools
Exploring Maccy's role within the broader ecosystem of macOS applications designed to enhance user efficiency. This includes its native UI integration, keyboard-first approach, and comparison with other macOS-specific utilities.
Open Source Software
This cluster highlights Maccy's open-source nature, discussing the benefits of transparency, community contributions, and its licensing model (MIT). It also touches upon the financial support model via the App Store.
Privacy-Focused Applications
Focuses on Maccy's commitment to user privacy, including local data storage, lack of cloud synchronization, and features like ignoring sensitive data from password managers and app blacklisting.
Sources & References
Fact-CheckedLast verified: Feb 15, 2026
Key Verified Facts
- Maccy is a lightweight, open-source clipboard manager designed specifically for macOS.[c1, c2]
- It maintains a searchable history of everything you copy, allowing for quick retrieval of past items.[c2]
- The application is built to be fast, efficient, and integrates seamlessly with the native macOS user interface, prioritizing a keyboard-first approach for minimal distraction.[c2]
- Maccy captures and stores a history of all copied content, including text, images (with HEIC preview support), and links.[c2]
- Users can quickly search their entire clipboard history by typing keywords, enabling rapid retrieval of specific snippets. It also supports fuzzy search and regular expressions.[c2]
- 1Maccy GitHub Repository
Accessed Feb 15, 2026
- 2Maccy Official Website
Accessed Feb 15, 2026
- 3Maccy on the Mac App Store
Accessed Feb 15, 2026
- 4MIT License (Open Source Initiative)
Accessed Feb 15, 2026
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