Frequently Asked Questions — Clipnest
Is Clipnest free and open source?
Yes. Clipnest is free with no paid tier, no account, and no in-app purchases, and it’s released under the MIT license — the full source is on GitHub for anyone to read, fork, or modify. There’s no trial, no feature gate, and nothing held back for a future paid version.
Is this the same as the other apps called ClipNest?
No. This Clipnest is the free, open-source clipboard manager for macOS and Linux built by Aayush Gour, with its source at github.com/AayushGour/clipnest and its home at this site. It is unrelated to the other products that share the name — including clipboard apps called ClipNest on the Mac App Store and the Microsoft Store, and several video and editing services. This Clipnest is not sold on any app store: it’s downloaded only from its GitHub releases, and it’s the only one of them that runs on Linux (Ubuntu with GNOME).
Does Clipnest send my clipboard data anywhere?
No. Everything you copy, paste, or save as a snippet stays on your Mac — there are no servers, no sync, no analytics, and no telemetry. The one narrow exception is a background check against GitHub’s public Releases API (about once a day, and you can turn it off in Settings → General) to see whether a newer version exists; it sends nothing about you or your clipboard, just an anonymous request for the latest release tag. See the Privacy page for the full picture, including the one trade-off (OCR) covered below.
Will updating Clipnest make me re-grant Accessibility permission?
No — that’s the point of how Clipnest is signed. Every Clipnest release is signed with the same long-lived certificate, and macOS ties an Accessibility grant to the app’s designated code identity, which stays stable across releases signed with the same certificate. Many apps that rebuild or resign with a new identity between versions invalidate your grant on every update, sending you back to System Settings to re-add the app by hand. Clipnest is built specifically to avoid that — update it and Accessibility keeps working, no re-grant needed.
Why does macOS say Clipnest is from an “unidentified developer”? Is it notarized?
Clipnest is not notarized with a paid Apple Developer ID, and if you download its .dmg straight from a browser, macOS’s Gatekeeper will show the “unidentified developer” warning (on macOS 15 and later the dialog has no Open button: go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the Clipnest message and click Open Anyway; or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Clipnest.app). The supported install path avoids this entirely: scripts/install.sh (the one-line curl command on the Download page) downloads over curl, which never sets the quarantine flag that triggers that Gatekeeper check in the first place — instead, the script verifies the .dmg against a published SHA-256 checksum before ever mounting it. Every release is still signed, just with one long-lived, self-signed certificate rather than a Developer ID — enough to keep your Accessibility grant stable across updates (see above), but not enough on its own to satisfy notarization. Clipnest is still a young project; if you’d rather wait for a fully notarized, Gatekeeper-clean build, that’s on the roadmap but not shipped yet. The full explanation is in Signing, honestly.
How is Clipnest different from macOS 26 Tahoe’s built-in clipboard history?
Tahoe’s built-in history (Spotlight, ⌘Space then ⌘4) is opt-in, keeps items for 8 hours by default (configurable from 30 minutes up to 7 days as of macOS 26.1), and lets you search and clear what you’ve copied — but it can’t pin favorites, organize anything, save a snippet, or expand text by keyword. Clipnest picks up from there: history that doesn’t quietly age out, a dedicated Pinned tab, and reusable snippets that expand by keyword in any app.
How is Clipnest different from Maccy and Deck?
Compared to Maccy (a well-established free, open-source clipboard manager), Clipnest adds snippets with keyword expansion, optional on-device OCR, and a full Settings window, at the cost of being brand new rather than battle-tested since 2018. Compared to Deck (a newer, feature-dense native competitor), Clipnest is a smaller, more focused app under a plain MIT license, rather than Deck’s source-available terms. Neither comparison is one-sided — Maccy’s pinning and years of hardening, and Deck’s regex/semantic search and automatic OCR, are real advantages on their side; see the feature table on the home page for a quick, sourced side-by-side.
What is the on-device OCR feature, and why is it off by default?
Clipnest can optionally read the text inside a copied screenshot, entirely on your Mac, using Apple’s Vision framework — no upload, no model download, no network call. It’s off by default because turning it on means that recognized text becomes indexed and searchable alongside the image, so a screenshot containing a password or anything else sensitive turns that content into searchable text on disk. Turn it on in Settings → History only if you’re comfortable with that trade-off; it’s a Fast/Accurate choice once enabled, and it never runs on anything the privacy filter already excludes (password-manager copies, excluded apps).
What systems does Clipnest support?
Mac: macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.
Linux: Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04 with GNOME, on X11 or Wayland, for amd64 and arm64. The Linux version is a native GTK 4 app built from the same Swift core, with the same history, search, pinned items, snippets with keyword expansion, on-device OCR and Settings. The same one-line install command as on the Mac works; see the Download page (and the Linux details).
Does Clipnest capture images and files, or just text?
All of the above. Clipnest automatically captures plain text, rich text, URLs, images, and files as you copy them, and you can filter the history down to just one type with a click. Copied images also get an optional recognized-text badge if OCR is turned on (see above).
What are snippets, and how does keyword expansion work?
A snippet is reusable text you write yourself — a signature, boilerplate reply, or command — saved with a short Tag. Type that Tag in any app, select it, and press a hotkey (⌥⌘E by default); Clipnest replaces the selection with the snippet’s full body. It works the same way in native apps and in Electron/Chrome-based ones like VS Code or Slack, using the Accessibility API where it can and a clipboard-snapshot-and-restore fallback where it can’t. Nothing expands automatically as you type: you press the shortcut on the selected Tag. If something can’t be expanded, Clipnest tells you why (nothing selected, no matching tag, Accessibility missing, or the app didn’t accept the replacement). Tags must be unique, and matching ignores case and surrounding spaces.
How much clipboard history does Clipnest keep?
By default, the most recent 2,500 items (raised from 1,000 in 1.6.0; a limit you chose yourself is kept). You can switch that to a day-based cap (30 days by default) or turn retention off entirely and keep everything, with no limit. Pinned items are always kept regardless of the cap, and you can wipe your whole history at any time from Settings.