Maccy history not saving

First, confirm this is a saving problem, not a capturing one. If new copies never appear at all, read Maccy not capturing clipboard items instead. This guide is for history that appears but does not persist.

1. Raise the history size limit

Maccy keeps a maximum number of items and drops the oldest beyond that. If the limit is low, your history will seem to “not save” because items are purged quickly. Open Settings → Storage and increase the size limit. See history retention and size limits for the full explanation.

2. Pin what you must keep

Pinned items are exempt from automatic purging and survive clears and restarts. If a few specific clips keep disappearing, pin them with the pin shortcut (Option-P by default). Details in pinned items and favorites.

3. Make sure Maccy quits cleanly

If your Mac shuts down abruptly or force-quits Maccy, the most recent items may not be written to disk. Quit Maccy normally (or restart your Mac normally) and confirm history persists afterwards.

4. Check disk space and the database

Maccy stores history in a database under ~/Library/Application Support/Maccy. If your startup disk is full, writes can fail silently. Free up space and retry. If the database has become corrupted (rare), quit Maccy, move that folder to your Desktop as a backup, and relaunch — Maccy will create a fresh database. You lose old history but saving works again.

5. Update and, if needed, reinstall

Run the latest version (built-in updater, brew upgrade --cask maccy, or a fresh .dmg). A clean reinstall resolves stubborn state issues; your database folder is left intact unless you remove it.

Still losing history? The troubleshooting guide covers the rest.

Why Maccy history does not persist between restarts

If your clipboard history disappears every time you restart Maccy or your Mac, the cause is almost always one of these three settings:

Fix 1: Disable “Clear on Quit”

This is the most common cause. When enabled, Maccy deletes all history every time the app quits — which includes every Mac restart.

1. Open Maccy Preferences (⌘,)
2. Go to the History tab
3. Uncheck Clear History on Quit

After disabling this, your history will persist across restarts indefinitely.

Fix 2: Increase history size

If history disappears during a session (not just on restart), you may have hit the size limit:

1. Open Maccy Preferences → History
2. Find Size and increase it (default is 200, maximum is 999,999)

When the limit is reached, the oldest items are removed automatically to make room for new ones. This is not a crash or bug — it is working as designed. If you want truly unlimited history, set the size to 999,999 and use pinning for critical items.

Fix 3: Verify Maccy’s storage folder

Maccy saves history to ~/Library/Application Support/Maccy/. If this folder is read-only or on a drive that gets erased, history will not persist.

# Check if the folder exists and is writable
ls -la ~/Library/Application\ Support/Maccy/

You should see a Maccy.sqlite file. If the folder is empty or missing, Maccy was not able to write to it. Fix permissions:

mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/Maccy
chmod 755 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Maccy

Using iCloud to back up history

Maccy supports optional iCloud sync that keeps your history backed up and synced across Macs. If you enable it, your history survives even a clean macOS reinstall.

Enable in Maccy Preferences → iCloud Sync. Once enabled, the history is stored in iCloud Drive and can be accessed on any Mac signed in to the same Apple ID. See the iCloud sync guide for full details.

Pinning important items

Even with a large history limit, items will eventually age out. For snippets you want permanently available — a home address, a standard code snippet, a boilerplate email — use pinning:

1. Open Maccy (⌘⇧C)
2. Highlight the item you want to keep
3. Press ⌘P to pin it

Pinned items appear at the top of the list permanently and are never removed, even when the history limit is reached. See the pinned items guide.