In short
- macOS 26 Tahoe or later: press ⌘ Space, then ⌘4.
- Any version of macOS: in Finder, choose Edit → Show Clipboard to see the last thing you copied.
- For a history that goes back more than 7 days, with filters and favorites, use a clipboard manager such as Mippoo.
Clipboard history in Spotlight (macOS 26 and later)
- Press ⌘ Space to open Spotlight.
- Press ⌘4, or click the clipboard button to the right of the search field.
- The first time, macOS asks whether to show results from the clipboard. Allow it: history is recorded only from that moment on.
- Type to find an item. Select it, press ⌘C, then paste with ⌘V as usual.
By default Spotlight keeps clips for 8 hours. In System Settings → Spotlight you can switch to 30 minutes or 7 days, and clear the history.
macOS 15 Sequoia and earlier
Older versions of macOS keep a single item: whatever you copied last. Copy something new and the previous item is gone. To see the last copied item, open Finder and choose Edit → Show Clipboard.
There’s no built-in way to get back anything copied before that. A clipboard manager has to be running before you copy.
A longer history with Mippoo
Mippoo is a free clipboard manager for macOS 14 Sonoma or later on Apple Silicon Macs. It saves text, formatted text, links, images, files and PDFs as you copy them, and shows each item with the icon of the app you copied from and the time.
- Press ⌥ Space over any app to bring up your history. Start typing to find an item and press Return to copy it.
- In the main window, ⌘F searches the history, and filters narrow it by type and by the app you copied from.
- Star the items you reuse: Favorites stay through restarts and through the automatic cleanup.
- There’s no time limit. The history holds up to 1,000 items and 256 MB, and the oldest items go first when it fills up.
- An item copied from the history comes back with every saved format, and you paste it with ⌘V as usual.
Download Mippoo or see how it compares with other clipboard managers.
Passwords and privacy
Everything you copy ends up in a clipboard history, passwords and codes included. Apple’s guide to Spotlight warns about this too.
- Mippoo skips copies that an app marks as concealed or transient, which is what password managers usually do, and doesn’t record copies from 1Password, Bitwarden or the Passwords app.
- In Mippoo’s settings you can stop it from saving copies from any other app.
- Your history stays on your Mac and is never sent anywhere, but it’s stored unencrypted. Delete sensitive items by hand.
More on the privacy page.