Clipiary

Clipiary is a vibe coded macOS clipboard manager with powerful features and an optional global copy-on-select mode (works for most apps).

Copy On Select

Screen.Recording.2026-03-16.at.15.31.15-under-10mb.mp4

Installation

Clipiary can be installed through my own homebrew tap:

brew tap liamhess/tap
brew install --cask clipiary

Since I don't pay for a Apple Developer ID you will have to access the untrusted signing in the Privacy & Security settings.

For the copy-on-select feature to work you will have to grant Accessibility rights.

Usage

Clipiary lives in your menu bar. Click the icon or press Cmd+Shift+V (configurable) to open it. Use arrow keys to navigate, Return to paste, and Cmd+D to favorite an item.

Quick paste previous — Press Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+P (configurable) to instantly paste the second item from your history without opening Clipiary. Useful for swapping between two clipboard entries.

Copy-on-select currently works for many apps but not for all (depending on the apps specific accessibility settings). You can configure the amount of latest copy-on-select items that should be kept in the history, to avoid polluting it with mouse selections that were never intended to be copied/pasted (copy-on-select items that were actually pasted are exempt from removal).

Custom Favorites Tabs

By default there is a single "Favorites" tab. You can configure multiple named favorites tabs either by right-clicking a tab or by creating a config file at:

~/Library/Application Support/Clipiary/config.json

Example (see docs/config.example.json for a full template):

{
  "favorites" : [
    {
      "name" : "Snippets",
      "entries" : [
        { "text" : "alias l='ls -al --color=auto'", "monospace" : true },
        { "text" : "<details><summary>blabla<\/summary><p>\n\n```\n```\n\n<\/p><\/details>", "monospace" : true }
      ],
    },
    {
      "name" : "Templates"
      "entries" : [
        { "text" : "Best Regards,\nFoo" },
        ...
      ],
    }
  ]
}

Each tab can optionally include entries that are pre-populated on first launch and pinned (they cannot be unfavorited). When multiple tabs are configured, Cmd+D opens a picker where you can toggle an item's membership with Space or arrow keys + Enter, and dismiss with Esc.

Development

Development, release, and tap-maintainer notes live in DEVELOPMENT.md.

The repo automation lives in python3 tools/clipiary.py, with no external Python packages required.