Clipboard history

Tinycast saves what you copy, so you can find it later and paste it back into the app you were using.

Clipboard history is the only feature that's on by default. To turn it off, go to Settings → Clipboard → Enable Clipboard History. When it's off, nothing is recorded, the history file closes, and the Clipboard History and Paste Sequentially commands and their shortcuts are removed. Your existing history is kept, and Clear history still works.

Opening it

• Press tab from the launcher (after Quick AI, if AI is on).
• Run the Clipboard History command, or use its global shortcut from Settings → Clipboard.
• Choose Clipboard History in the Tinycast menu bar menu.

The footer shows where a paste will go, like "Paste to Notes".

Actions

The Default action setting swaps return and ⌘return. If you set it to Copy to Clipboard, return copies and ⌘return pastes. If you set it to Paste as Plain Text, return pastes plain text and ⌃⌘return pastes normally. Double-clicking and the number shortcuts follow the same setting. ⌥return always pastes.

Paste as Plain Text pastes only the text. For a file, that's its path instead of the file. An image has no text, so it always pastes as an image.

Edit Entry opens a text entry for editing. ⌘return saves the change to the same entry and puts it on the clipboard. return starts a new line, and esc cancels. An entry can be up to 32,000 characters long.

Copy Text reads the text in a copied image, or an image file, and puts it on the clipboard. The text is recognized on your Mac. If the image has no text, you see No text found.

Pasting needs the Accessibility permission.

You can also drag any row into another app. Dragging always copies, so the entry stays in your history. When you drop it, the palette closes, the same as after a paste.

Paste Sequentially

Give Paste Sequentially a shortcut in Settings → Clipboard to paste a series of copies one at a time without opening the palette. If you copy A, then B, then C, three presses paste C, B, then A into the frontmost field, so you can move between fields as you go.

It works with text, images and files, and doesn't change the order of your history. Copying something new, or waiting a minute between presses, starts again from the newest entry. After the oldest entry, it shows Nothing left to paste instead of starting over.

What it keeps

• Text, with a preview. Text longer than 32,000 characters isn't recorded.
• Images, like screenshots, saved as PNG files. When you paste an image, a terminal receives the path of its saved file, because terminals ignore image data.
• Files you copy in Finder. Tinycast saves a reference to the file in its current location, not a copy of the file. Up to 32 files per copy are recorded. When you paste, apps receive the file itself, and text fields receive its path.
• Colors. A copied #FF5733, rgb(…), hsl(…) or oklch(…) is shown as a color swatch.

If a file has been moved or deleted since you copied it, it stays in your history, because its old location can still be useful. Pasting it shows a message instead of failing silently. For file entries, ⌘K also offers Show in Finder, Open and Copy Path.

You can play video and audio files in the preview. Nothing plays until you press play.

Filtering by type

⌘P opens a filter to the right of the search field. There are seven options, and every entry belongs to exactly one:

All Types · Text Only · Images Only · Files Only · Colors Only · Links Only · Emails Only

Copied URLs count as links rather than text, and colors aren't text either, so Text Only shows regular text.

Each filter has its own empty message, so "Clipboard history is empty" never appears when the history only looks empty because of a filter. The filter stays available on an empty list, so you can always switch back.

Links and emails are detected from the text each time and never stored separately. Text over 2,048 bytes, or text containing a space, counts as plain text. A bare domain must be lowercase and end in a common domain ending, so Safari.app, report.pdf and index.html stay text.

Pinning

⌘. pins the selected entry.

• Pinned entries appear in a Pinned section at the top, in the order you pinned them.
• They come first in both the full list and your search results.
• ⌘1 to ⌘9, then ⌘0, act on the first ten visible pinned entries.
• Pinned entries are never removed by the retention limit. Clear history and Delete All Entries keep them too. To remove a pinned entry, use Delete Entry.
• Pasting a pinned entry doesn't change its position.
• Unpinning an entry makes it the newest entry, instead of returning it to an old date group.

Searching text inside images and PDFs

Search text in images and PDFs is off by default. When you turn it on, Tinycast reads the text in your copied images, image files and PDFs, so searching for a word in a screenshot finds it.

• Text recognition happens on your Mac, one item at a time, while you aren't typing or moving the mouse.
• It runs in a separate helper process, so Tinycast itself stays light.
• It handles files up to 32 MB and the first 64 pages of a PDF.
• The recognized text is only used for search. Pasting still gives you the original item.
• Turning the setting off stops recognition. Text that was already recognized is kept and reused if you turn it back on.

This setting isn't included in backups.

Settings

Settings → Clipboard

Excluded Applications includes Keychain Access and Passwords by default, so Tinycast never records what you copy from them. You can add your own apps. Copies that apps mark as confidential are also skipped.

Limits worth knowing

History is stored in clipboard.sqlite3, with images next to it, in Tinycast's Application Support folder. Because it isn't in Caches, Time Machine backs it up and macOS never clears it on its own.

• Tinycast checks the clipboard twice a second. It recognizes and skips its own pastes, so pasting from Tinycast never adds a new entry.
• The newest 1,000 entries are kept in memory. Search also covers older entries.
• Search needs at least three characters to use the full index. Shorter searches only look through the recent entries in memory.
• A search returns at most 200 matches before the type filter is applied, so a narrow filter on a broad search can show fewer results than your history contains.