Coming from Windows, people often press Cmd+V expecting a list to pop up, and nothing happens. The Mac list is somewhere else. On macOS 26 and later it is in Spotlight, and on macOS 15 and earlier there is no list: the clipboard holds exactly one item, and the moment you copy the next thing the last one is gone.
How to see (and stretch) the native Mac clipboard
Two things are built in, and both stop short of a real history:
- The Spotlight clipboard, on macOS 26 and later. Press Cmd+Space, then Cmd+4 to switch to the Clipboard. Clear History empties it. Apple’s Mac guide has the steps. It only holds recent copies, and it stays on that Mac.
- Universal Clipboard. If you are signed into the same Apple Account on a nearby iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you can copy on one and paste on the other. It carries only the latest item, and only for a short window, so it is a bridge between devices rather than a history.
The Spotlight list doesn’t keep things long. Since macOS 26.1 you choose 30 minutes, 8 hours or 7 days in System Settings > Spotlight, and 7 days is the most it will hold. Copies from Apple’s Passwords app and copies an app marks as private are left out, but anything else, like a password kept in a note, shows in the list as plain text. Nothing locks the list, and there is no way to exclude an app.
That is the extent of it. There is nothing that reaches a Windows PC or an Android phone, and nothing you can keep for good. If you need more, you have to add it.
What Relic adds on Mac
Relic is a full clipboard manager built around a permanent, searchable, encrypted history, and the Mac app is here: a signed, notarized download for Apple Silicon that lives in your menu bar. Windows, Linux, Android and iPhone are all shipping too. Here is the experience it delivers:
- A real history. Instead of a short list, you get everything you copy. The free tier keeps the last 500 copies inside 250 MB, and Pro keeps everything forever inside 25 GB.
- Instant search. Type a few letters to find any past copy, including text inside screenshots thanks to on-device OCR. Local SQLite and full-text search keep it fast.
- Encrypted sync that crosses ecosystems. Your history is encrypted on your device with XChaCha20-Poly1305 and an Argon2id-derived key before it syncs. We store only ciphertext and genuinely cannot read it. Unlike Universal Clipboard, it reaches your Windows PC and your phone too, not just Apple gear.
- It never hijacks your paste. Relic writes to your clipboard only when you explicitly pick an item, never on its own.
The Mac options vs Relic
| Relic | macOS | Maccy | Paste | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keeps a history at all | macOS 26 | |||
| Keeps everything, no cap (paid plans) | ||||
| Search history | macOS 26 | |||
| Reads text in screenshots | ||||
| Syncs to Windows | ||||
| Syncs to your phone | Apple only | iPhone | ||
| End-to-end encrypted | ||||
| Free tier |
Maccy and Clipy are great free local choices, and Paste is the most polished if you never leave the Apple world. We wrote honest head to head pages on the closest ones:
So which should you use?
If you only ever work on one Mac, a free local manager like Maccy solves the missing-history problem nicely and costs nothing. If your copies need to follow you to a Windows PC or your phone, and you want them kept forever and readable only by you, that is what Relic does. Grab it for your Mac today, and it is on Windows too.