Clipbara

A fast, private, open-source clipboard manager for macOS.
Find anything you've copied, organize important clips, and paste without leaving your keyboard.

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Download latest release  ·  Install with Homebrew

• Complete clipboard history: Capture plain text, rich text, HTML, images, links, files, colors, and code snippets.
• Instant access: Open the non-activating panel with ⌘ ⇧ V without losing focus from your current app.
• Fast search and filters: Search clip contents, titles, or source apps, then filter by content type or date.
• Pinboards: Keep important clips in named collections and organize them with drag and drop.
• Quick Look: Press Space to preview text, images, links, files, and colors before pasting.
• One-click copy: Click any clip once — it lands on your clipboard and the panel closes instantly, ready for ⌘ V.
• Keyboard-first workflow: Search, navigate, preview, and paste without reaching for the mouse.
• Flexible settings: Configure shortcuts, history size, appearance, launch at login, and excluded apps.
• Private by default: Clipboard data stays on your Mac with no account, server, analytics, or tracking.

Menu bar dropdown

Settings

If you need clipboard sync across devices, Paste's subscription earns its price. If you want the card-style workflow without one — and want to read every line of code that touches your clipboard — that is why Clipbara exists.

Clipbara requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later.

brew install --cask mobrava/tap/clipbara

1. Download the latest .dmg from GitHub Releases.
2. Open the disk image and drag the app into Applications.
3. Launch Clipbara from the Applications folder.

Clipbara is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple (as of v1.1.11), so it opens without any security warnings.

1. Launch Clipbara. It will appear in the menu bar.
2. Copy anything normally with ⌘ C.
3. Press ⌘ ⇧ V to open your clipboard history.
4. Start typing to search, or use ← and → to move between clips.
5. Click a clip once to copy it — the panel closes right away, so just press ⌘ V where you need it. Or press Space to preview and Return to copy.

The global shortcuts can be changed in Settings → Shortcuts.

Selecting an image clip puts the image back on the macOS clipboard, but a shell prompt itself cannot accept image data. The app or CLI running inside the terminal must support clipboard image input.

For example, with Codex CLI on macOS:

1. Press ⌘ ⇧ V and select the image clip you want to reuse.
2. Return to Codex without copying anything else.
3. Press Control + V in Codex to attach the clipboard image.

Codex uses Control + V for image attachments rather than the usual macOS ⌘ V text-paste shortcut. Other terminal apps may use a different image-paste workflow.

Right-click a clip to rename it, add it to a Pinboard, or delete it.

Clipbara is designed to keep your clipboard private:

• Local-only storage: Clipboard history is stored on your Mac using SwiftData.
• No account or backend: There is no sign-in and no server receiving your clipboard data.
• No telemetry: Clipbara does not collect analytics, tracking, or usage data.
• App exclusions: Prevent selected apps, such as password managers, from being recorded.
• Offline core: Capture, search, preview, and paste work without an internet connection. Network access is used only for software updates through Sparkle.

• macOS 14 or later
• Xcode 16 or later
• XcodeGen

git clone https://github.com/mobrava/Clipbara.git
cd Clipbara
brew install xcodegen
xcodegen generate
open Clipbara.xcodeproj

Build and run the Clipbara scheme with ⌘ R in Xcode.

Contributions are welcome. Please read the Contributing Guide and Code of Conduct before opening a pull request.

Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue.

Clipbara is available under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

The Mac App Store edition is distributed by the copyright holder under a separate proprietary license (dual licensing). The source code for both editions lives in this repository.

If Clipbara is useful to you, consider starring the repository.