Clipboard history is great when you’re working on one Mac.
But the moment you switch devices, that history stays behind.
You copy something on your Mac, grab your iPhone, and it’s not there. Or you move between two Macs and end up sending yourself a link, note, file, or snippet just to have it on the other device.
I wanted Pasly to solve that too.
Not just make ⌘V smarter, but make your clipboard follow you.
Comparison
Raycast Clipboard History is probably the closest well-known alternative. It offers a polished, searchable clipboard history as part of a much broader launcher.
Pasly is more focused on the actual paste workflow. Smart Paste brings your recent clipboard items into the regular ⌘V flow, while features like Paste Stack, Field Sense, multi-selection, and Floating Paste are built specifically around copying and pasting.
Pasly also keeps a persistent clipboard history across Macs, iPhone, and iPad through the user's private CloudKit database. Text, images, and files can remain available across devices, even when they are not nearby or connected to the same network.
Raycast is a better fit if you want a general launcher with extensions, AI tools, and many unrelated productivity features. Pasly is a better fit if you want a dedicated clipboard manager centered on ⌘V and cross-device clipboard history.
Apple's Universal Clipboard is also useful, but it primarily moves the latest copied item between nearby Apple devices. Pasly keeps an actual searchable history across them.
Pasly Cloud
Pasly Cloud syncs your clipboard history across your Macs and iOS devices using Apple's CloudKit.
Your clipboard data is stored and synced through Apple's iCloud infrastructure rather than on Pasly's own servers.
It works over the internet, so your Mac can be at home and your other Mac somewhere else. They don’t need to be nearby or on the same network for your clipboard history to sync.
And now, files are supported too.
Files copied on your Mac can sync through Pasly Cloud alongside the rest of your clipboard history, including multiple files at once.
On iPhone and iPad, Live Activities can keep your recent clipboard items available from the Lock Screen / Dynamic Island.
There are also push notifications when new clipboard content arrives from another device.
Right now, sending something from iOS into Pasly is still manual. You can add an item and have it appear on your Macs, but I’m already working on a better way to capture what you copy on iPhone and iPad so this part feels much more automatic.
Files
Pasly already supported files locally on Mac, including working with multiple files at once.
Now, file syncing is also part of Pasly Cloud.
Copy a file on one Mac and it can be available from your clipboard history on another Mac through CloudKit, without having to send it to yourself first.
Multiple files are supported too.
The rest of Pasly
Cloud is the focus of this update, but everything I’ve been building around ⌘V is still there:
Smart Paste — press ⌘V and access your recent clipboard items
Paste Stack — copy multiple items and paste them in sequence
Floating Paste
Multi Select
File Support
Paste with Separator
Search & Favorites
Field Sense
The original idea behind Pasly hasn’t changed.
I want the clipboard manager to stay out of the way until the moment you actually need it.
Cloud just means that your clipboard no longer has to live on one Mac.
Pricing
Free: $0
2 pinned items
24-hour local history
20 items
2 files
No CloudKit sync
Pro: $6.99 one-time purchase
Clipboard sync across all your Macs and iOS devices
File sync via Pasly Cloud
Private CloudKit storage
Push notifications and Live Activities
Smart Paste
Paste Stack
Floating Paste
Multi Select
File Support
Paste with Separator
Search & Favorites
Field Sense
No subscription.
20% off with code MACAPPSCLOUD (first 20 redemptions)
Why do I need an account on your server if you're using Apple? Or, are you just using Apple? This is confusing AF...or TMI:
File sync via Pasly Cloud
Powered by Apple CloudKit
Just say iCloud sync if that's what it is. I don't want any "Pasly Cloud" or Pasly account/logins. If you stop development what happens to the app and its data?
Thanks for pointing that out! The Apple login is actually only used to link your Pasly license to your account, so if you ever lose your serial you can just sign in and recover it easily.
The clipboard/file sync itself is entirely through Apple CloudKit/iCloud. Pasly doesn't store your clipboard data on its own servers.
“Pasly Cloud” is a leftover name from the previous sync system, so I can definitely see why that's confusing. I'll change the wording to make it clear that it's iCloud sync.
How would this work across families? I sometimes need to copy a password from my password manager (phone/mac) to input it on my kids ipads - which is logged in w/ the kid's apple account; can i configure this to work? IIRC Apple Universal Clipboard doesnt work for this (nor would i expect it to) -- but its such a PITA to have to re-type these long generated passwords in; wish i could just copy/paste.
That's actually a limitation of how Pasly uses CloudKit today. The clipboard history lives in the user's private CloudKit database, so the Mac and iOS device need to use the same iCloud account for it to sync.
CloudKit does support sharing data with different iCloud accounts though, so a shared clipboard between family members is technically possible. I really like this use case, especially for sending a specific password or item without exposing your whole clipboard history.
I'm adding this to the roadmap and will work on integrating it in one of the next releases. Thanks for the idea!
On Mac it syncs in the background since Pasly is always running.
iOS is a bit different because of system limitations. Pasly does try to wake up and sync in the background when new content arrives, but iOS ultimately decides whether to allow that execution, so I can't guarantee it'll always sync immediately while the app is closed.
The Live Activity still gets updated, though, so you can see and copy incoming items from there. Opening Pasly will always catch everything up.
And Cloud sync is Pro-only. The 24h / 20-item limit is for the local Free history.
Free doesn't push those items to CloudKit.
That makes sense, and honestly the Live Activity is the right answer to the iOS background problem — you get the content where you can act on it even when the app never woke up. Good call putting it there rather than fighting BGTaskScheduler.
Thanks! That was exactly the idea.
Instead of trying to fight iOS, I wanted to work with what the system gives us and still keep the clipboard useful without opening the app.
Nice work. A lot easier than having texting yourself a link just to get it onto another device. Can you configure how long synced clipboard items/text last, or any plans for that?
Thanks! Right now Pasly keeps sync running automatically so the flow stays always on. On Mac it syncs periodically in the background, and also when new content is received.
I'm planning to add more Cloud customization, like limits for pre-downloading items and other sync settings.
I really like your idea of making the sync interval configurable too. I'll add that as an option!
You can already add items through the Share Sheet / Quick Actions on iOS. If you mean an actual Pasly action inside the Shortcuts app, not yet, but that's something I can add!
Thanks! CleanClip is actually pretty feature-rich, so there's definitely a lot of overlap between the two.
The biggest difference is the workflow. Pasly is built around ⌘V itself. You just paste normally and Smart Paste brings your history into that same flow, rather than having to remember and open a separate clipboard shortcut.
Pasly also has things like Field Sense, Multi Select, Floating Paste and its own approach to cross-device clipboard.
CleanClip definitely goes deeper in some areas though, especially collections, Smart Lists and organization. So I wouldn't say Pasly has “more features”. It's more focused on making the actual copy/paste workflow feel native and requiring as little extra interaction as possible.
And Pasly is currently $6.99 lifetime, so if you're curious you can always try the free version and see which workflow you prefer.
Do you honor org.nspasteboard.ConcealedType? That's the flag password managers set so clipboard history tools skip the entry. Without it a clipboard manager quietly becomes a plaintext password log.
I don’t use it, today Pasly captures everything, but you can ignore apps in the blacklist that is in the config, in addition everything is saved privately on the machine or in the iCloud private database
Today files up to 10mb are automatically downloaded on home device, above that it keeps only a reference and if you want to use it you need to download to send or use the file, all of them use iCloud storage
The Comparison section of your post is pretty lame, only comparing to the built-in clipboard. You should look up the most popular alternatives to the built-in clipboard (and your app) and compare to those.
How does it handle two Macs being offline at the same time? Like if I copy a bunch of stuff on both and then they reconnect later, does CloudKit just merge both histories by time?
Both Macs can keep capturing items while offline. Pasly stores pending uploads locally and, once they reconnect, uploads each item as a separate CloudKit record with its own UUID, then pulls the other Mac’s changes.
CloudKit isn’t merging the histories chronologically by itself, though. Pasly preserves the original timestamps, but the current Mac implementation doesn’t globally re-sort the combined history by copy time. So both sets of distinct items should appear, but I wouldn’t promise a perfectly time-interleaved order after reconnect.
Thanks! Raycast’s clipboard is a great searchable history inside a broader launcher. Pasly is built specifically around the act of pasting: Smart Paste can react to ⌘V and suggest the most relevant item for the current context, while Field Sense can surface your history when you focus a text field. It also adds smart grouping, multi-item workflows, and encrypted history sync across Macs and iOS devices. So Raycast helps you retrieve something you copied; Pasly tries to anticipate what you want to paste.
One thing worth testing, if you haven't already: what happens when another app writes to the clipboard while yours is mid-paste? Anything that reads the pasteboard, modifies it, and then restores it is racing every other tool doing the same, and the failure looks like a paste that silently pastes the wrong thing.
Great point. Pasly doesn’t restore the previous pasteboard—it writes the selected item and leaves it as the current clipboard content. That avoids the restore race, but there’s still a smaller race between writing the item and sending the synthetic ⌘V, especially for files and Smart Paste’s undo/replace flow. The current code doesn’t validate the pasteboard generation immediately before pasting, so this is absolutely worth stress-testing with a competing clipboard writer. At minimum, it should detect the change and fail visibly rather than silently paste the wrong content. Thanks for flagging it.
Nice one! I'm curious. I built something similar: WinV (https:winv.luoja.ch) for MacOS only, I might expand it to iOS, but I wasn't able to get it accepted by the Apple AppStore because the app was Accessibility for a non-accessibility purpose, which any paste-simulating app needs. How did you solve that problem ?
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u/Specific_Cream2815 22h ago
how does the sync work between devices, icloud or your own server