Yankit GitHub →
Feature complete v1.4.2 macOS 14+ Free · MIT

Your clipboard, finallyremembered.

Yankit is a menu-bar clipboard manager for macOS. It remembers the text, images and files you copy, and pastes any of them back into the app you were in.

Download for macOS View on GitHub

Open the panel anywhere:⌘ ⇧ V

friday-notes.md

Friday standup

- ship the build

- reply to Sam:

Click any clipping (or press Return) to paste it into the sample doc. The doc scrolls, so keep pasting.

▶ Watch

Yankit 1.3
in 46 seconds.

Every feature in the default panel, then the new preview pane (beta): how to turn it on, and what it looks like once it is.

01 What it keeps

Everything you copy,
nothing you'll lose.

Fifteen small behaviours, each one real. Pinned to the board in no particular order.

Captures

Captures everything you copy

Plain text, images and files, picked up automatically the moment you copy them. Nothing to press, no extra step.

textimagesfiles
Memory

Light on memory

History lives in SQLite with image blobs on disk, not in RAM.

~40 MB

resident while idle

Search

Searchable history

Press ⌘⇧V, start typing, and the list filters instantly. It matches text, file names and the app a copy came from.

invoice1 match
Paste

Paste straight back

Pick an item and Yankit pastes it into the app you were just in.

Pin

Pin what matters

Pinned items are exempt from the rolling limit and never auto-deleted.

Prune

Prune on the fly

Delete any single item with ⌘⌫, or right-click it and choose Delete.

Tune

Yours to tune

A configurable cap (default 30) trims the oldest items, with optional auto-expiry by age.

PRIVATEPrivacy

Privacy-first

Skips password-manager content, dims while paused, and keeps its data out of Spotlight and Time Machine. Nothing leaves your Mac: no account, no sync, no telemetry.

Pause

Pause when you need to

One click silences capture for an hour, until tomorrow, or until you resume.

for an houruntil tomorrowuntil I resume
Exclude

Per-app exclusion

Tell Yankit to ignore copies made in specific apps.

Organize

Tabs for what you keep

Recent stays in copy order, so your latest copy is always on top. Pinned items get their own tab, and you can make your own categories. Move items by dragging them onto a tab, right-clicking, or pressing ⌘M.

RecentPinnedKeys+
Sensitive

Keys stay hidden

Mark a category sensitive and its items show only their first few characters. Add a label so you know which key is which. Paste still uses the full value.

OpenAI keysk-p••••••••
Look

Glass or not

Liquid or Frosted Glass on macOS 26, Translucent or Solid everywhere, an opacity slider, and your pick of accent.

Preview · beta

See it before you paste

Turn on the preview pane and the panel widens to show the selected item large: the full text, the image, a color with its tints, or a file's first page. Sensitive items stay hidden until you peek. Try it with the Preview button on the demo above.

textimage#FF6B4APDF
Keys

Built for the keyboard

⇥ switches tabs, ⌘1–9 pastes an item straight away, ⌘P pins, ⌘L labels, and holding ⌥ peeks at a hidden key.

02 Three kinds of thing

One pile in.
Kept three ways.

scroll: the pile sorts itself ↓
TEXT

The full string goes into SQLite, with a short preview so the list stays light.

Thanks, this looks great!
https://github.com/AbyAbyss/Yankit
git push origin main
meeting at 4, bring notes
SELECT * FROM items;
IMAGES

The original bytes are written untouched to blobs/ on disk, plus a 128 px thumbnail.

2048 × 1280
1170 × 2532
800 × 600
3024 × 1964
FILES

Only the file's URL and name are stored, never its bytes. Move the file and the item goes stale.

Q3-roadmap.pdf
invoice-0412.pdf
intro-cut.mov
design-v7.fig

Sample clippings. Yankit does not regroup your history by kind: the Recent tab stays in copy order. This shows how each kind is stored.

03 How it works

Two paths,
one shared clipboard.

Yankit lives in the menu bar: no Dock icon, no window in your way. A lightweight monitor watches the system pasteboard and records each new copy. When you pick an item, it goes back on the pasteboard and Yankit pastes it where you were.

Copyin any app: text,an image, or files ClipboardMonitorpolls the pasteboardabout every 0.4 s Repositorydedups by hash,trims past the cap SQLitehistory.sqlite: text + metadata blobs/ on diskimages + 128 px thumbnails History panel⌘⇧V · search · pin · delete Pasteboard + ⌘VPasteService sends ⌘Vwith a CGEvent The app you were inyour pick lands here capture path recall path skips password managers, paused time, excluded apps full payload, only on demand Copy in any apptext, an image, or files ClipboardMonitorpolls the pasteboard about every 0.4 s Repositorydedups by hash, trims past the cap SQLitetext + metadatahistory.sqlite blobs/ on diskimages + 128 pxthumbnails History panel⌘⇧V · search · pin · delete Pasteboard + ⌘VPasteService sends ⌘V with a CGEvent The app you were inyour pick lands here

Capture. The monitor skips password-manager content, respects pause and excluded apps, and ignores Yankit's own pastes.

Store. One SQLite table for metadata and text. Image and file payloads stay out of the database so it stays small and fast.

Recall. Only the row you pick is loaded in full. Without Accessibility access, Yankit still puts your pick on the clipboard for a manual ⌘V.

04 Keyboard

Shortcuts that
stay out of the way.

The panel is built for the keyboard. Each key below presses itself when it scrolls in.

⌘⇧V

Open or closethe history panel from anywhere

type

Searchfilters the history live as you type

↑↓

Movethe selection through the list

Return

Pastethe selected item into the app you were in

⌘⌫

Deletethe selected item from history

⌘M

Movethe selected item into a category

⌘1–9

Quick pastethe first nine items, no arrowing needed

⇥

Switch tabsRecent, Pinned and your categories (⇧⇥ goes back)

⌘P

Pinor unpin the selected item

⌘L

Labelan item, e.g. which key this is

hold ⌥

Peekat a sensitive item in the preview pane

Esc

Dismissthe panel and carry on

⌘⇧V is rebindable in Settings → General

05 Download

Grab the DMG.
Drag it to Applications.

Yankit for macOS

The latest build is on the Releases page as Yankit-<version>.dmg. Open it and drag Yankit into Applications.

Download latest DMG

Needs macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
Latest release: v1.4.2 · MIT license
Updates itself from 1.4 on
or build it from source ↓
enjoying it? buy me a coffee ☕

! First launch

macOS will say it can't verify Yankit (free side project, not notarized).

  1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
  2. Or run this in Terminal:
    xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Yankit.app
  3. For one-touch paste, grant Yankit Accessibility access when prompted (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility).

Without Accessibility, Yankit still places your pick on the clipboard so you can paste it yourself with ⌘V.

06 Build from source

Three commands,
then ⌘R.

The Xcode project is generated from project.yml with XcodeGen, so it is not committed to the repo.

Requirements

  • macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
  • Xcode 15 or later
  • XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen)

Press ⌘R to run and ⌘U to run the tests. A clipboard icon appears in the menu bar. Grant Accessibility access when prompted for one-touch paste.

Terminal

# 1. install XcodeGen

brew install xcodegen

# 2. clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/AbyAbyss/Yankit.git

# 3. generate the project and open it

cd Yankit && xcodegen generate && open Yankit.xcodeproj

07 What's next

The torn-off to-do.

Yankit is feature complete today. These are the next steps.

next up

  • Auto-updates: Check for Updates… right in the menu
  • Code signing and notarization for a friction-free install
  • A Homebrew cask: brew install --cask yankit
  • Drag items out of the history panel

Contributions welcome.

MIT licensed. Build it, fork it, improve it. The design contract lives in ARCHITECTURE.md.

Open the repo →

08 Support

Free to build.
Nice to support.

Yankit stays MIT licensed and free to download or build. If it saves you time, here's how to keep it going.

Free, and staying free

No account, no trial, no paywall. The cheapest way to help: star the repo, report a bug, or tell a friend who copies a lot.

Star on GitHub

MIT licensed.
Report a bug or ask for a feature →

Leave a tip.

If Yankit saves you a few minutes a day, a coffee keeps the updates coming.

Buy me a coffee