Use Universal Clipboard to copy and paste between your Apple devices Set up Universal Clipboard Use Universal Clipboard with any Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that meets the Continuity system requirements. It works when your devices are near each other and set up as follows.
Unlike other clipboard apps that have fancy UI, CopyClip is simple, lightweight, and gets your job done quickly. Alfred: A Spotlight On Steroids Like Batman, power users also need an Alfred. Here are the five best # Clipboard manager apps that you can use to optimize # productivity on your # Mac. Top 13 PhotoScape X Tips and Tricks PhotoScape X is one of the best free photo-editing. CuteClip 3is the perfect companion for Mac OS X's native clipboard. It integrates perfect with the look of Mac OS X and completely stays out of the user's way. CuteClips sits in the background and continuously records changes to the clipboard in order to provide access to them when the user needs it. Jumpcut rose like cream to the top of the recently rev'd clipboard apps I found here. I am on the same page as the developer (unlike his wife) and Jumpcut works pretty much the way I want it to. Simple and Mac like with transparency and some nice effects but at the core non-intrusive.
When working on a Mac, the keyboard shortcuts to copy and paste are Command/⌘+C to copy, then Command/⌘+V to paste. Everything you copy and paste goes to the same place: the clipboard.
However, there is a drawback to this remarkable time-saving tool. macOS only comes with one built-in clipboard, and whatever you want to paste is limited to the last thing you copied. So if you copy something, then forget to paste it, and copy something else, then paste that, you need to go back to the thing you were originally trying to copy and paste to complete that task. It can be a pain and sometimes cost as much time as you were hoping to save thanks to these limitations of the clipboard.
Thankfully, there are ways around these limitations and you can view and access the clipboard history on a Mac. In this article, we cover the most effective ways and options for viewing and managing the clipboard history on a Mac.
What is clipboard on Mac?
The clipboard is one of those programs that runs in the background, and often this is something you wouldn't need to give a second thought. It is a basic program, which is why it takes up almost no processing power or space. However, if you want to view the clipboard, it can be located through the Finder menu, in the top toolbar. Find and select Show Clipboard to see the last item you copied.
It will only show the most recent item. Once you copy something else, the item before that disappears.
Universal Clipboard
Introduced in macOS Sierra and iOS 10, Apple devices now come with a Universal Clipboard which means you can copy on one device and paste on another. Providing these devices are logged into the same iCloud account and connected to the same WiFi network, with Bluetooth switched on - and not too far apart - this is another fantastic time-saver from Apple.
Not only Apple thinks about the convenience of its users. A lot of developers work on creating better tools for Mac users. CleanMyMac X is one of such tools, that is meant to clean and optimize your Mac. The app is notarized by Apple, so there is no better and safer cleaner for your Mac. I have been using CleanMyMac X for a long time, and my Mac has been performing flawlessly ever since. So, if you’re eager to speed up your Mac, this is a tool for you.
Hidden secondary clipboard
It should also be noted that Apple has a hidden secondary keyboard. It is a well-kept, practically an insider secret. Select whatever you want to cut - not copy - and press Control + K to cut the text an image or a document. To paste it in its new location, press Control + Y. Because this cuts an item, it won't remove whatever you copied most recently from the main keyboard.
How to view and manage clipboard history on a Mac?
Your Mac clipboard is not unlike the human short-term memory. It is transient and tends to only hold onto one thing at a time. Once it's gone, it's gone. So, it can only reveal the latest thing you copied. You can view clipboard through the Finder menu. Here’s what you need to do:
- Open Finder.
- Click Edit in the top-left.
- Select Show Clipboard.
In the window that opens, you will see the latest thing you copied. Here’s how my clipboard looks like:
If you expected to find everything you copied in your clipboard, you could be disappointed. Clipboard only saves the last item you copied. This is a massive drawback of the macOS clipboard, and there is no way to view the clipboard history without applying other special tools.
Developers have been busy coming up with solutions that work with macOS to solve this problem. In order to give people more control over the Mac clipboard, they even create apps that provide you with more than one clipboard on a Mac.
Tools to view clipboard history on Mac
Because the macOS clipboard is limited to the most recent item copied, gaining the advantage of more functionality means using a third-party app - such as a clipboard manager - to effectively create a secondary clipboard within your Mac.
Paste is one of such apps. It keeps everything you copy to let you access it later. Rocket Typist is a similar tool, but its main purpose is to save the phrases you use the most. Another app, called Unclutter, is great at keeping your copied info organized - it saves everything you drag and drop and allows you to create notes.
How to fix clipboard if it isn’t working?
If copy and paste isn’t working on Mac, Activity Monitor may help you.
- Go to Applications and choose Utilities.
- Launch Activity Monitor.
- Type pboard in the search bar and hit Enter.
- Click the X in the top-left to quit the process.
If quitting the clipboard didn’t help, then the issue may be with your keyboard. To fix it, you need to highlight some text, either double-clicking it and choosing Copy or selecting the Copy option from the Edit menu. Then choose Paste from the Edit menu. If it works, then your keyboard, not clipboard, is the one to blame. In this case, the restart of the Mac may help you fix the issue. Go to the Apple menu and choose Restart.
Although clipboard is a simple background program, something can always go wrong. So if you ever find yourself in a situation where clipboard isn't working - which will impact apps that rely on that functionality to make your life easier - there is an app that can solve this and many other problems.
One way to clean up a Mac and improve the performance is one of the most powerful and popular Mac cleaner apps on the market: CleanMyMac X.
CleanMyMac X is a powerful, easy-to-use and versatile Mac performance improvement tool. To use this app to clean your Mac - including clearing caches and browser history, follow these steps:
- Download CleanMyMac X.
- Run a Smart Scan.
- Click Review Details to check the junk CleanMyMac X detected. Usually, these are user cache files, system logs, etc.
- Click Run to clear and speed up your Mac. Delete with confidence, knowing your Mac will run smoother and faster with files that aren't needed finally tidied up.
It should be noted that CleanMyMac X knows what can be removed and what should stay on your Mac, so it excludes crucial system files from the search.
Now, you know that you can quickly view clipboard history on your Mac through the Finder menu. Apple clipboard isn’t perfect, though, so you can’t check out everything that you’ve copied. Thankfully, some special apps can help you with that. Install any of the apps I recommended above to keep all your copied items at hand.
Make your Mac invincible
Copy and paste has been revolutionary for productivity. That may sound bizarre, considering how commonplace it is. Everyone copy–pastes, all the time. But without such functionality, we’d have to start from scratch on whatever we are working on every time.
Instead of starting over, copy and paste gives us control and time. Control to know that once we’ve created something once — whether it’s a passage of text, an entire document, images, videos, music, code — we can replicate it, instantly and easily. And wherever we have an internet connection, we can share those creations or links with anyone else in the world.
When you stop and think about it, copy and paste is remarkable (on a Mac: Command/⌘+C to copy, then Command/⌘+V to paste). The problem is, we are so used to it, so used to skipping back and forth between tasks that once we’ve copied something, if we don't paste it, we can quickly lose it and need to start again. Such a pain! Unfortunately, even the most expensive Macs only have one clipboard.
Avoid clipboard limitations
Get an upgrade for your macOS clipboard with Setapp. Quick fixes, no limitations, simplified history recovery.
How to view and manage clipboard history on macOS
Once you’ve copied something else, what you originally copied is lost. A Mac clipboard is a transient memory function, only designed to hold one item at a time. Once it's gone, it's gone. Clearly, this is a problem, and one that developers have been working on with numerous solutions, known as clipboard managers, appearing over the years. Thankfully, we have a solution we highly recommend to this particular problem with copy and paste history.
Where do you find the clipboard on your Mac?
A Mac clipboard is one of those macOS programs that runs in the background. You can find it and view clipboard through the Finder menu, in the top toolbar. Find and select Show Clipboard to see the last item you copied.
How does the macOS clipboard work?
As a native program, macOS clipboard runs the same way as other macOS operating functions. Clipboard is a basic program, which is why it takes up almost no processing power or space, except for the item it currently holds. Unfortunately, this comes with limitations. You can’t see anything else, apart from the latest item you copied. Once you copy something else, the first copied item disappears.
Gladly, now we have a solution for viewing the little-known secondary clipboard, where you can find your clipboard history.
The Mac’s hidden secondary clipboard
Not many people know that macOS has a hidden secondary clipboard. It’s a very well-kept secret. Select any text and press Control + K to cut it. To paste it in its new location, press Control + Y. Note that this cuts, rather than copies, the text. As this feature uses a different functionality, it won’t remove what is currently on the “main” clipboard.
Universal Clipboard
Universal Clipboard is a feature that was introduced in macOS Sierra and iOS 10, and allows you to copy and paste between Apple devices, as long as they’re signed into the same iCloud account and connected to the same WiFi network, with Bluetooth switched on. They also need to be physically close to each other.
To use Universal Clipboard, all you have to do is copy on one device and paste on the other.
How to view clipboard history
The main way to view your clipboard history is to paste (Command/⌘+V). That will show you the most recent item you copied. But did you know you can copy and paste in the Finder too? If you want to copy a file from one folder to another, for example, you can select it, press Command/⌘+C, then click in the folder you want to copy to and press Command/⌘+V.
You can even access clipboard history on a different device than the one you copied from, thanks to Universal Clipboard in macOS Sierra and iOS 10. To use it, your devices must be running at least iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, have both Bluetooth and WiFi turned on and be close to each other. They’ll also need to be signed into iCloud, since Universal Clipboard uses iCloud to sync data. Then all you have to do is copy on one device and paste on the other, using the usual copy and paste method on each device.
How to avoid clipboard limitations
If you have problems using Universal Clipboard, try logging out of iCloud on each device and logging back in again.
There are a couple of alternatives to copying and pasting.
- One is to use text clippings. These are snippets of text that look like files, but can’t be edited and behave differently. To create a text clipping, select text in any document and drag it to the desktop. You can then drag it onto any document in any application that accepts text and drop it at the point where you want to paste it. You can also drag and drop the snippet directly from one application window onto the window of another — missing outboard stores multiple items.
- Paste is quite straightforward. Think of it as a clipboard manager for your Mac, which automatically keeps everything you’ve copied regardless of the format. You can record all clipboard types, from plain text to images, screenshots, links, and more. Anytime you need, you can smart search through the clipboard history manager, share anything through AirDrop or sync to iCloud, and even access clipboard history on other devices using the Universal Clipboard.
- Rocket Typist is another great app that approached solving clipboard limitations from a different angle. This app allows you to create multiple text snippets for passages you use frequently, from email greetings to PHP scripts. Assign trigger combinations for saved snippets and call on them in any app or environment. Alternatively, you can then paste directly into the document you’re working on by selecting the snippet in Rocket Typist to move it to the clipboard and pasting it the regular way.
- One more tool to help solve the clipboard problem is Unclutter. Designed as an app for storing notes and files neatly on your Desktop, Unclutter features a clipboard manager that retains the contents of your Mac’s clipboard, even after you copy something else. An organized interface makes your clipboard history easily accessible, allowing to find any old item you need to paste again.
How do you paste from the clipboard on a Mac?
To paste something from the standard macOS clipboard, use Command/⌘+V. However, when you are using a clipboard manager like Paste, you’ve got several options for pasting items from the clipboard.
- Drag and drop items from the Paste interface directly to any Mac app
- Select and paste multiple items at once
- Paste items as plain text, no matter the format of the original
- Access and paste files from multiple devices using iCloud sync
- Paste using customized shortcuts for most recent as well as old items
- Allow others to paste your snippets by sharing over AirDrop.
How to fix it a non-working clipboard
The first step when you discover that copy and paste don’t work is to check that it’s macOS that’s at fault and not your keyboard. Select some text in any application, then go to the Edit menu and choose Copy. Then go back to the Edit menu and choose Paste or Unclutter. If that works, the problem is with your keyboard.
If that doesn’t work, trying fixing the issue with Activity Monitor.
Clipboard Manager For Mac Os X
- Go to Applications > Utilities and double-click on Activity Monitor to launch it
- In its search box, type: pboard
- When it shows the pboard process, select it and press the X in the toolbar
- Click Force Quit and then close Activity Monitor
Go to an app where copy and paste wasn’t working and try again. If it still doesn’t work, try using Terminal to fix it.
- Go to Applications > Utilities and double-click on Terminal to launch it
- Type: killall pboard
- Hit Return
- Close Terminal
Try and copy and paste again in the same app as before. If neither Activity Monitor nor Terminal solves the problem, the next step is to restart your Mac.
How to recover clipboard history on a Mac
The fact that the macOS clipboard only retains the most recently copied thing means that there’s no way to easily view or recover clipboard history. You can, however, use Command/⌘+Z to undo the most recent action and then press it repeatedly to step back through everything you’ve done. Eventually, assuming the application you’re using supports unlimited undos, you’ll get to the point where you pasted the item you want to recover.
A much easier way to recover clipboard history is to use apps like Paste or Unclutter. They retain multiple items and allow you to view them easily in the app, selecting the one you need.
Snippets manager for Mac
Check out the top three best clipboard managers for handling snippets. Grab the handiest one for the job.
Clipboard Manager Mac Os
How to clear the clipboard
Clipboard App Mac
Clearing your clipboard is easy. Either overwrite the current copied item with a copy of something else or, in case of using Paste, delete the clipboard history with a few clicks. However, it’s a good idea to store some items or the whole clipboard history in iCloud just in case you need some of it in the future. Paste or Unclutter make managing clipboard history as straightforward as it can be.
While most Mac users limit themselves to one clipboard item at a time and feel frustrated with every accidental overwrite, you can use apps like Paste, Unclutter, and Rocket Typist — all available in the Setapp app collection — to extend the native capabilities of your Mac and save yourself hours of headaches in the future.
Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.
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