Maccy vs PasteBar (2026): Minimal vs Feature-Packed Free

What is PasteBar?

PasteBar is a free clipboard manager available for both macOS and Windows. It goes well beyond a simple history: you get unlimited clipboard history, organised collections, tabs and boards for saved clips, customizable templates and form fields, quick-access paste menus, and even web-request and scraping features. All data is stored locally, with an optional lock screen and passcode.

PasteBar's pitch is breadth — a comprehensive clip-management workspace for people who save and reuse a lot of structured content across two operating systems.

What is Maccy?

Maccy is a free, open-source clipboard manager built natively for macOS under the MIT license. It records what you copy and lets you paste any earlier item through a fast, keyboard-driven popup. It is deliberately narrow: searchable history, pinned items, password-manager safety, and optional iCloud sync — nothing more.

Maccy's pitch is focus — the fastest possible recall loop with a native macOS feel and a tiny footprint.

Maccy vs PasteBar at a glance

Price and platform

Both apps are free, so cost is not the deciding factor. The platform difference is: PasteBar is cross-platform (macOS and Windows), while Maccy is macOS-only and native. If you switch between a Mac and a PC and want the same clip tool on both, PasteBar has the edge. If you live entirely on macOS, Maccy's native build feels more at home.

Maccy is also open source under MIT; PasteBar is free but not MIT-licensed open source in the same way.

Features: workspace vs focus

PasteBar offers collections, tabs, boards, templates with form fields, and quick-access menus — it is a place to organise reusable content. Maccy intentionally omits all of that. It gives you a flat, searchable history plus pinned favourites and stops there.

If you maintain libraries of canned responses, code snippets, and structured templates, PasteBar's organisation tools are genuinely useful. If that sounds like overhead and you just want your last few hundred copies instantly searchable, Maccy is cleaner.

Speed and native feel

Maccy is written in Swift on native AppKit, so it looks and behaves exactly like part of macOS and opens instantly. PasteBar is a cross-platform app, which brings breadth but a less native macOS texture and a larger footprint.

For people who value a popup that feels indistinguishable from a system feature, Maccy's native approach wins.

Privacy and security

Both store data locally. PasteBar adds a lock screen and passcode for its workspace, and keeps everything on-device. Maccy stores history locally too, respects the concealed-clipboard flag so password managers are not recorded, and lets you exclude specific apps.

Maccy's open-source MIT code means its privacy behaviour is fully auditable. Both are reasonable choices for privacy-conscious users.

Performance and footprint

Maccy is around 8 MB with near-zero idle usage. PasteBar, with its richer feature set and cross-platform runtime, is heavier. On a lightweight or older Mac, Maccy stays more invisible.

The trade-off is direct: PasteBar gives you more tools and uses more resources; Maccy gives you less and uses almost nothing.

Where PasteBar is the better choice

Choose PasteBar if you want a free, cross-platform clip workspace — collections, boards, templates, form fields — especially if you move between macOS and Windows and want consistency. It suits power users who treat saved clips as an organised library.

Where Maccy wins

Choose Maccy if you are macOS-only and want a fast, native, open-source clipboard manager that disappears until you summon it. No boards to maintain, no templates to set up — just instant recall of what you copied, with pinned favourites and password-manager safety.

What about the built-in macOS Tahoe clipboard?

macOS 26 Tahoe added a clipboard history to Spotlight (⌘Space, then ⌘4). It is free and built in but keeps items only up to seven days, with no pinning, organisation, or per-app exclusion — so both Maccy and PasteBar still offer much more. See how the Tahoe Spotlight clipboard works.

The bottom line

Both are free, so pick by philosophy. PasteBar is the feature-packed, cross-platform workspace for organising lots of reusable content. Maccy is the minimal, native, open-source sprinter for fast recall on macOS. If you want organisation and Windows support, PasteBar; if you want speed, nativeness, and zero overhead, Maccy.