Maccy image and file clipboard support
A clipboard is not just text. Maccy keeps images, files, rich text, and links in your history too — preserving the original so it pastes back cleanly. Here is what is supported and how it behaves.
Images
Copy an image — from a browser, a screenshot, a design tool — and Maccy stores it in your history with a thumbnail preview. Open the history, find it, and paste it wherever images are accepted. The original data is preserved, so quality is not degraded on paste.
Files
When you copy a file in Finder, Maccy keeps a reference to it, so you can paste the file again later. This is a file reference, not a stored duplicate of the file’s contents — handy for re-pasting the same file into different places without hunting for it again.
Rich text and URLs
Maccy preserves rich text (with its formatting) and recognises URLs. You can paste rich text as-is, or strip it to plain text on demand — see how to paste without formatting. Links are kept intact for easy reuse.
How different types appear
| In Maccy | |
|---|---|
| Plain text | Text preview |
| Rich text | Text, formatting preserved on paste |
| Image | Thumbnail preview |
| File | File reference with name |
| URL | Link, ready to paste |
Disk and history considerations
Text costs almost nothing to store, but images are larger. A history with many images uses more disk space than a text-only one. If you keep a very deep history, that is worth knowing — tune your limit in history retention and size limits. Maccy stays fast either way.
Limitations to expect
A few apps place unusual custom pasteboard types that are not stored; copying the same content as text or an image usually works. Concealed items (such as password-manager entries) are skipped by design — see does Maccy see your passwords.
For everyday copying of text, images, files, and links, Maccy simply remembers them all so you can bring any of them back.
What Maccy captures beyond text
Maccy captures text, images, rich text (RTF), HTML content, file references, and URLs. Each type is stored and displayed appropriately in the history list.
Images in clipboard history
When you copy an image — a screenshot, a copied photo from Preview, or an image from a web page — Maccy stores it in history and displays a thumbnail in the history list. You can search image items by any associated metadata, though Maccy does not currently support OCR (searching by text content within images).
Pasting an image from Maccy pastes it as an image. The destination app needs to support image paste (Notes, Mail, Pages, image editors, etc.).
File references
When you copy a file in Finder (Cmd+C on a file or folder), Maccy captures the file reference. Pasting from Maccy pastes the file reference, which in Finder creates a copy of the file in the destination folder — exactly like a standard paste.
Note: Maccy stores a reference to the file at the time of copy, not the file contents. If you copy a file, then move or delete it, the Maccy history entry may fail to paste if the original file no longer exists at the original path.
Configuring which content types to capture
You can control what Maccy records:
- Open Maccy Preferences → Appearance
- Check or uncheck Images, Files, Text
Disabling images keeps the history database smaller and faster if you copy many large screenshots. Disabling file references prevents accidental clipboard history entries from file management operations.
Storage implications
Images are large compared to text. A single high-resolution screenshot can be 3–5 MB; a text snippet is typically under 5 KB. If your work involves many screenshots, your Maccy database will grow quickly with images enabled.
Practical options:
- Disable image capture if you never need to retrieve copied images
- Reduce history size when images are enabled (500 instead of 5,000)
- Periodically clear old items to keep the database manageable