Computer Clipboard History — How to Search Everything You've Copied
Computer Clipboard History — How to Search Everything You've Copied
You copied a URL. Then you copied something else. The URL is gone.
This happens dozens of times a day. You copy an API key, a phone number, an address, a code snippet — then copy something new and the old one vanishes. Your operating system only remembers the last thing you copied.
Clipboard managers help, but they only track items you explicitly copy. What about text you saw but forgot to copy? A clipboard manager can't help with that.
Here's how to get full clipboard history — and more — on any computer.
Built-In Clipboard History
macOS
No built-in clipboard history. macOS only stores one clipboard item at a time. You can press Cmd+V to paste whatever you last copied, but there's no way to access previous items.
Windows
Windows 10/11 has Win+V for clipboard history. It keeps the last ~25 items and syncs across devices. It's better than nothing, but limited: no search, no images after a restart, and the history is short.
Linux
Varies by desktop environment. GNOME has clipboard extensions, KDE has Klipper. All offer basic clipboard history with limited search.
The Problem with Clipboard Managers
Dedicated clipboard managers like Maccy (Mac), Ditto (Windows), or CopyQ (Linux) improve on the defaults. They keep hundreds or thousands of items and let you search through them.
But they share a fundamental limitation: they only capture what you copy.
Think about everything you saw on screen today but didn't explicitly copy:
- Error messages in your terminal
- URLs in Slack messages you read but didn't click
- Code from a PR review you glanced at
- Numbers from a spreadsheet someone shared on screen
- An email address mentioned in a meeting chat
None of that makes it into your clipboard history. The information was on your screen but you didn't think to copy it at the time.
Beyond Clipboard: Search Everything on Screen
Screenpipe takes a fundamentally different approach. Instead of tracking your clipboard, it records your entire screen with OCR — extracting all visible text from every app, every window, every tab.
This means:
- Everything you copied is searchable (it was on screen when you copied it)
- Everything you saw but didn't copy is also searchable
- Search goes back weeks or months, not just recent items
- AI-powered queries: "What was that API key I saw in Slack last Tuesday?"
It's a superset of clipboard history. The clipboard is captured as a side effect of capturing everything on screen.
How It Works
- Screenpipe takes screenshots at regular intervals (1-2 seconds)
- OCR extracts all visible text from each frame
- Text is indexed in a local SQLite database with timestamps and app context
- You search by keyword, app name, or natural language
Example Searches
"api key"→ finds any API key that was visible on screen"meeting link" app:Zoom→ finds URLs from Zoom windows"192.168"→ finds any IP address you saw- Ask the AI: "What was the AWS access key from yesterday's terminal session?"
Comparison
| Screenpipe | Maccy / Ditto | macOS / Win+V | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Captures copied items | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Captures screen text | ✅ (OCR) | ❌ | ❌ |
| History depth | Weeks/months | Hundreds of items | ~25 items |
| AI search | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Audio search | ✅ (transcription) | ❌ | ❌ |
| Cross-platform | Mac, Windows, Linux | Per-platform | Per-OS |
| Open source | ✅ MIT | Varies | ❌ |
| Local/private | ✅ 100% | ✅ | ⚠️ Win syncs to cloud |
Privacy
Clipboard history — whether from a clipboard manager or Screenpipe — contains sensitive data. Passwords, API keys, personal messages, financial information.
Screenpipe keeps everything local. All processing happens on your device. The code is open source, so you can verify this claim. No cloud sync, no third-party access.
Windows clipboard history with Win+V can sync to Microsoft's cloud if enabled. Be aware of this if you're copying sensitive data.
Getting Started
- Download Screenpipe for Mac, Windows, or Linux
- Grant screen recording permissions
- Use your computer normally — everything is captured
- When you need to find something you copied (or just saw), search
You'll never lose a copied URL, API key, or code snippet again. And you'll find things you didn't even think to copy.
For more on this, see the clipboard history manager use case.