Help Center

PasteCube requires macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later and runs on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

Search for PasteCube in the Mac App Store and download it for free. After installation the app lives in your menu bar with no Dock icon — the clipboard-shaped icon is the entry point. Downloading and using it costs nothing; the free tier gives you access to your latest 20 items, and you can unlock full history with a one-time in-app purchase whenever you need it.

PasteCube is a menu-bar utility by design and intentionally hides its Dock icon. The menu bar provides Open Panel / Settings… / Quit PasteCube to stay out of your workspace.

The default is ⌃⌥V (Ctrl+Alt+V). Press it from any app to summon the command palette; press it again or click elsewhere to dismiss.

Open the panel, click “⋯ → Settings…”, then under Global Shortcut click “Change” and press the new combination. It must include at least one modifier key (⌃⌥⇧⌘).

If the new combination is taken by the system or another app, registration fails and PasteCube automatically rolls back to the last working shortcut — you are never left without one.

↑↓ move the selection, ↩ pastes, ⌘1–9 quickly select the first nine items, ⌘⌫ deletes the selected item, ⎋ closes the panel. The search box is always focused, so just start typing.

Activate an item with Return (or a double-click) and PasteCube writes it back to the system clipboard, hides the panel, and returns focus to the app you were using before you summoned it — just press ⌘V there to paste. No window switching needed.

No. PasteCube neither requests nor uses the macOS Accessibility permission, and it never synthesizes keyboard events or injects input. Paste-back happens entirely through the system clipboard; pressing ⌘V is always your own action.

Yes. The panel is a non-activating window: it records the active app when summoned, then hides and explicitly returns focus to that app after you activate an item, so ⌘V lands where you were working.

Write-back follows the content type: images go back as a bitmap (falling back to a file URL), rich text is written as both plain text and HTML source, and plain text is written directly. Formatting survives when you paste into a rich-text editor.

Five: plain text, links (URLs), code snippets, images, and HTML rich text. Capturing follows a priority of image → rich text → plain text.

Via local keyword heuristics supporting React, Vue, C/C++, Java, Swift, Python, Go, TypeScript, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, HTML and more, shown as a colored badge above the code preview.

Yes. Formatted content copied from a browser or rich editor is saved with both plain text (for display and search) and the HTML source (for write-back), so formatting survives when pasting into rich editors.

Repeated copies of identical content do not add new records — they refresh the item’s timestamp. If the same content already exists in history, the new record replaces the old one, keeping the list clean.

Right-click an item, choose “Tag”, and check or create a tag. You can also create tags via the tag menu in the panel header and rename/delete them under “Manage Tags…”.

Tagged items are exempt from capacity eviction: even once history passes the 3,000-item cap, tagged records are never auto-deleted. You can also filter all records under a tag with one click. Note that tagging affects whether an item is evicted by capacity, not whether the free tier can see it — the free tier always shows your latest 20 items, and tagging an older item will not make it visible again on the free tier.

Unlimited. Creating, renaming, deleting, and assigning tags all work fully on the free tier with no cap. What Pro unlocks is tag filtering that reaches your entire history — the filtering scope, not the number of tags.

Search covers the content itself, source app name, link domain, and code language, case-insensitively. Category, tag, and keyword filters apply simultaneously. On the free tier, search and filters operate within your latest 20 items; unlocking Pro extends them across your entire history.

Copy any image (or an image file) anywhere — PasteCube captures it automatically. Activate an image item to write it back as PNG for pasting into any image-capable app.

Powered by Apple VisionKit: in the preview pane you can select, copy, or look up text directly inside an image with your mouse — no separate OCR tool needed.

Captured images are saved as high-quality JPEG (compression 0.9) in the app’s private directory, used only on this Mac.

No. All history and images live only in the app’s sandbox container on your Mac. Nothing is sent to any server and there is no account system. The app’s only network permission exists for App Store purchase verification (StoreKit); it makes no other network requests.

No. PasteCube deliberately skips clipboard types marked sensitive or transient (org.nspasteboard.ConcealedType, TransientType, AutoGeneratedType) as well as 1Password’s proprietary type, so that content never enters your history.

On first launch PasteCube shows a privacy notice covering clipboard access, local storage, and data control. Recording starts only after you agree; you can decline and quit.

Summon the panel, click “⋯ → Clear Clipboard…”, and confirm. Clearing deletes all records and their image files from disk.

PasteCube runs sandboxed, so its data lives in ~/Library/Containers/cn.cortexgrid.PasteCube/. After moving the app to the Trash, delete that container folder for a clean removal (history is the Data/Library/Application Support/PasteCube/history.json file plus the images/ folder inside it).

PasteCube is free to download and free to use. The free tier gives you access to your latest 20 clipboard items with no time limit and no account. When you want your full history, unlock PasteCube Pro with a one-time in-app purchase (US$9.99), and all future updates are free.

It is not a subscription and never auto-renews. Pro is a StoreKit non-consumable in-app purchase (“PasteCube Pro (Lifetime)”) — a one-time purchase that stays valid permanently, with no expiry and no renewal.

No feature is crippled — the global hotkey, five-type content recognition, paste-back, Live Text OCR for images, tag creation and management, inline editing, and reordering all work on the free tier. The only difference is reach: Free accesses your latest 20 items, and search and filters operate within those 20. Pro unlocks full history, search across everything, and tag filtering that reaches your entire history.

Summon the panel and click “⋯ → Upgrade to Pro…”, or find the upgrade entry in Settings, to open the paywall and complete the purchase. Apple collects payment through the App Store; PasteCube never sees your payment details.

No. PasteCube always writes records to disk in full — the free tier only limits how far back you can reach, it never deletes the rest. The moment you unlock Pro, everything previously saved appears in your list.

The purchase is tied to your Apple ID. Sign in with the same Apple ID on the other Mac, download PasteCube free from the App Store, then click “Restore Purchase” in the paywall or Settings to get Pro back at no extra cost.

Click “Restore Purchase” in the paywall or Settings. It re-syncs your purchase history with the App Store and restores your entitlement. If you see “No previous purchase found to restore”, check that you are signed in with the same Apple ID you bought with.

Go to Account → Purchase History in the App Store, find PasteCube Pro, and request a refund. Apple handles the process under the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions. Once a refund is granted, the Pro entitlement is revoked automatically and the app reverts to the free tier.