Pasty

A blazing-fast, local-first, open-source clipboard manager for macOS — the upper-compatible successor to Paste, fully free under MIT.

Website · Download · Design dossier

Status: v0.2.0 — multi-select & bulk paste landed on top of P0–P5.

What makes Pasty different

	Paste	Maccy	Pasty
Price	¥4,500 / yr	Free OSS	Free OSS (MIT)
Spotlight-style center modal	✗	✓	✓
Bottom strip carousel	✓ (40-50 % screen)	✗	✓ (~25 % only)
Notch-hover dropdown	✗	✗	✓ unique
Pinboards with colors	✓	✗	✓
Paste Stack	✓	✗	✓
Snippet variables ({{date}}, {{cursor}}…)	✗	✗	✓
Code syntax highlight	✗	✗	✓
DSL search (type:link source:Safari /regex/)	✗	partial	✓
On-device OCR / tagging	✓ (paid)	✗	✓ free
Sync	iCloud only	✗	(P6, opt-in)
iOS sync	✓	✗	(P7)

Surfaces (the 3 ways to summon Pasty)

1. ⇧⌘V — Spotlight-style center modal with DSL search, ⌘1-9 quick paste, ⇧↩ plain-text paste.
2. ⌥⇧V — Paste-style bottom strip with carousel cards, kind filters, pinboard tabs.
3. Hover the notch — Liquid-Glass dropdown slides down from the top edge. Drag a card downward to drop it directly onto the editor. (Pasty's signature interaction; falls back to top-centre 20 % on non-notched Macs.)

Plus the menu-bar icon for quick access to recent clips, pause toggle, and settings.

Requirements

• macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel
• Accessibility permission (for ⌘V auto-paste — Pasty prompts on first launch)

Install

Pre-built .dmg (recommended)

Download the latest Pasty.dmg (3.3 MB) and drag Pasty.app to /Applications. Pasty is ad-hoc signed; the first launch needs right-click → Open to bypass Gatekeeper.

Multi-select & bulk paste (new in v0.2)

• Shift-click a range, ⌘-click to add/remove individual clips — same idiom as Finder.
• Space toggles the highlighted clip, ⇧↑/↓ extends the selection from the keyboard, ⌘A selects every visible clip.
• ↩ pastes each selected clip in order with a tiny pause between, ⌥↩ pastes them joined into one block (newline-separated).
• Selection works identically in the Spotlight modal, the bottom strip, and the menu-bar list.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/IvyGain/Pasty.git
cd Pasty
make build           # debug build
make run             # build + launch
make package         # produces dist/Pasty.app + dist/Pasty-*.dmg
make release         # release-config .app + .dmg
make demo            # automated smoke test (copy → SQLite → FTS5)

scripts/dev.sh wraps Swift with the right DEVELOPER_DIR / SDKROOT so it builds even when xcode-select still points at the Command Line Tools.

Data & privacy

Everything Pasty stores lives at:

~/Library/Application Support/Pasty/
├── pasty.sqlite       SQLite + FTS5 index of every clip
└── blobs/             binary blobs (images, files) — content-addressed

No cloud account. No telemetry. No analytics. Settings → Privacy lets you wipe the store with one click.

Architecture

NSPasteboard (250 ms poll)
        │   change-count + SHA-256 dedupe + sensitive-flag filter
        ▼
PasteboardObserver  ──>  ClipItem (text / RTF / image / file / link / color)
        │
        ▼
ClipStore (GRDB / SQLite + FTS5)  ◀──  SearchEngine (DSL: type: source: pinboard: /regex/)
        │                                          │
        ▼                                          │
PinboardStore  ─── pin / unpin / order / colour ◀──┘
        │
        ▼
PanelCoordinator ─┬─> SpotlightPanel  (⇧⌘V)
                  ├─> StripPanel       (⌥⇧V)
                  └─> NotchHover       (mouse on notch)
                          │
                          ▼
                 PasteAutomator (CGEvent ⌘V into frontmost app)
                          │
                          ▼
                 SnippetEngine ({{date}} {{uuid}} {{cursor}} …)
                 SyntaxHighlighter (regex lexer per language)
                 DiffEngine (LCS line diff)
                 AIEngine (Vision OCR, NaturalLanguage tagging)

Shortcuts

Key	Action
⇧⌘V	Toggle Spotlight modal
⌥⇧V	Toggle bottom strip
⌃⇧P	Pause capture for 60 s
↩, ↑↓, ⌘1-9	Navigate / paste in panel
⇧↩	Paste as plain text
Esc	Dismiss panel
␣	Quick Look preview (in panel)
⌘F	Focus search field
⌘E	Edit clip
⌘,	Open Settings

Search DSL

pasty                       plain FTS5 keyword
type:link safari            kind filter + keyword
source:VSCode swift         source-app filter
pinboard:Code react         restrict to pinboard
/(TODO|FIXME)/              regex over preview + content
>1d                         only the last 24 h
type:image source:Slack >7d combine freely

Roadmap

Phase	Status	Highlights
P0 Foundation	✅ shipped	PasteboardObserver, SQLite + FTS5, menu-bar UI
P1 Main flow	✅ shipped	Global hotkey, Spotlight modal, CGEvent paste, DSL search
P2 Pinboards + Stack	✅ shipped	Bottom strip, pinboard CRUD with colours, Paste Stack
P2.5 Notch-hover	✅ shipped	Top-edge trigger + Liquid-Glass dropdown + drag&drop
P3 Developer features	✅ shipped	Regex search, syntax highlight, snippet variables, diff view
P4 On-device AI	✅ shipped	Vision OCR, NaturalLanguage tagging, heuristic summary
P5 Polish & distribute	✅ shipped	Settings UI, JP/EN i18n, ad-hoc-signed .dmg build
P6 Sync (optional)	⏳ next	Syncthing / WebDAV / iCloud — fully opt-in
P7 iOS / Vision Pro	⏳ later	Universal Pasty Keyboard
P8 MCP server / CLI	⏳ later	Claude / Cursor / Codex integration

Contributing

PRs welcome. See docs/research/PASTE-RESEARCH.md for the full design dossier (why every choice was made, what the competing apps do, what we are deliberately not building yet).

make build              # build
make test               # XCTest (needs Xcode license accepted)

To switch to URL-based dependencies (recommended once sudo xcodebuild -license accept is done):

1. Edit Package.swift, replace .package(path: "Vendor/GRDB.swift") with .package(url: "https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift.git", from: "6.29.0").
2. Delete Vendor/.
3. make build.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Acknowledgements

• Maccy — proved Swift + polling is the right model.
• Paste — set the bar in clipboard UX.
• GRDB — the SQLite layer that makes FTS5 a joy.