vs S Maclip vs Spotlight
macOS 26 Tahoe added clipboard history right into Spotlight: ⌘-Space, then ⌘-4. Since macOS 26.1 it can be kept for 30 minutes, 8 hours or 7 days. It’s a handy minimum if you only occasionally need a recent copy back.
Where Spotlight shines
- Nothing to install
- Built into the system and Spotlight
Why people pick Maclip
- Works on macOS 14 and 15, not just 26
- Unlimited history, pins, paste stack and snippets
- Notch shelf, OCR, text transformations
- Encryption, secret detection, per-app rules
Feature by feature
| Feature | Maclip | Spotlight (macOS 26) |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Built into macOS |
| Text, images, files | Yes + RTF, colors, code | Not stated |
| History search | Yes Including OCR and app names | Yes |
| Text-in-image search (OCR) | Yes On-device (Vision) | Not stated |
| Pinned items | Yes | Not stated |
| Paste stack / sequential paste | Yes + collect copies into a stack | Not stated |
| Snippets with templates | Yes {date}, {clipboard}, {cursor}… | Not stated |
| Text transformations | Yes 24 transforms | Not stated |
| Notch shelf with drag & drop | Yes Shelf + “Copied” animation | No |
| Auto-capture of selected text | Yes 3 modes | Not stated |
| Secret detection & auto-delete | Yes API keys, tokens, cards, OTPs | Not stated |
| Ignores password managers | Yes nspasteboard.org | Not stated |
| Per-app exclusions | Yes 4 rules per app | Not stated |
| Encrypted history at rest | Yes AES-256-GCM | Not stated |
| Sync between Macs | Yes iCloud Drive | Not stated |
| End-to-end encrypted sync | Yes PBKDF2 + AES-256-GCM | Not stated |
| Hidden from screen sharing | Yes | Not stated |
| Tracking-parameter removal | Yes ~70 parameters | Not stated |
| Open source | No Not yet | No |
| macOS version | 14 Sonoma+ | 26 Tahoe+ only |
Spotlight data checked on November 13, 2026 using official sources: macrumors.com. “Not stated” means the vendor doesn’t publicly mention the feature.
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Download for free macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Apple Silicon and Intel