The clipboard manager your Mac deserves.
Native Swift. Apple Silicon. Free forever. Open source.
Your data never leaves your machine.
49 Swift files · 5,100+ lines · zero dependencies · <500KB binary
Every time you copy something, you lose what was there before. Not anymore.
EverClip lives in your menu bar and silently captures everything you copy — text, links, images, code, colors, Markdown, files. It detects what each clip is, organizes it intelligently, and serves it back to you instantly with ⌘⇧V.
No subscription. No cloud. No telemetry. Just a fast, native tool that does one thing exceptionally well.
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Auto-recognizes 7 content types — text, URLs, code, images, files, colors, and Markdown. Each gets its own visual preview and icon. Color-coded collections with multi-board support. One clip can live in many places. Tags for flexible cross-cutting organization. Auto-route clips to pinboards by source app, content type, regex pattern, or URL domain. Zero manual sorting — ever.
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Right-click any clip → Paste as plain text, UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, URL encode/decode, trim, or wrap in quotes. Full-text search across your entire history. Filter by type, source app, or pinboard. Debounced DB queries — fast at 1M+ entries. Create snippets with triggers like Everything stays on your Mac. Exclude sensitive apps (password managers, banking). Pause capture anytime. Your clipboard, your rules. |
More features
- Quick Look — Press
Spacefor a full-size preview of any clip - Drag & Drop — Drag clips directly from EverClip into any app
- Favorites — Star important clips so they never get pruned
- Theming — Dark/light mode, custom accent colors, UI/font scale, card sizes, drawer material
- Auto-updates — Checks for new versions via GitHub (no server needed)
- Launch at Login — First-launch prompt + toggle in Preferences
- DMG Installer — Classic Mac drag-to-install experience
- Custom App Icon — Programmatically generated at 10 sizes
Recommended for most users.
- Grab the
.dmgfrom the latest release - Open it and drag EverClip to Applications
- First launch: right-click → Open (required once — the app is ad-hoc signed, not notarized)
- Grant Accessibility permissions when prompted
git clone https://github.com/thornebridge/everclip.git
cd everclip
bash scripts/build.sh # builds .app + .dmg
open EverClip.appRequires macOS 14+ (Sonoma) and Swift 5.9+. Builds natively for ARM64.
| Shortcut | Action | |
|---|---|---|
| 📋 | ⌘ ⇧ V |
Open / close EverClip |
| 📚 | ⌘ ⇧ C |
Toggle Paste Stack |
| ← → | ← → |
Navigate between clips |
| ↵ | Return |
Paste selected clip |
| 👁 | Space |
Quick Look preview |
| 🗑 | Delete |
Delete selected clip |
| ✕ | Escape |
Close drawer |
Sources/EverClip/
├── main.swift # Entry point — NSApplication
├── AppDelegate.swift # Menu bar, hotkeys, lifecycle
│
├── Database/
│ ├── DatabaseConnection.swift # SQLite handle + typed helpers
│ ├── MigrationManager.swift # 4 versioned schema migrations
│ ├── EntryStore.swift # CRUD + search + count queries
│ ├── PinboardStore.swift # Pinboards + many-to-many junction
│ ├── TagStore.swift # Tags + entry associations
│ ├── SmartRuleStore.swift # Rule CRUD + loadEnabled()
│ ├── SnippetStore.swift # Snippet CRUD + abbreviation lookup
│ └── PreferencesStore.swift # Key-value settings
│
├── Models/
│ ├── Pinboard.swift # Named, colored, ordered collections
│ ├── Tag.swift # Multi-tag per entry
│ ├── SmartRule.swift # Auto-categorization rules
│ ├── Snippet.swift # Text expansion with {{templates}}
│ └── PasteTransformation.swift # 8 paste transform operations
│
├── Managers/
│ ├── ThemeManager.swift # Observable theme tokens (singleton)
│ ├── SmartRuleEngine.swift # Rule evaluation (AND/OR logic)
│ ├── PasteStackManager.swift # Sequential multi-paste
│ └── UpdateChecker.swift # GitHub-hosted version check
│
├── ViewModels/
│ ├── DrawerViewModel.swift # DB-backed filtering + Combine
│ └── PinboardViewModel.swift # Pinboard CRUD for UI
│
└── Views/
├── SidebarView.swift # Pinboards, tags, favorites
├── FilterBarView.swift # Search + content type chips
├── CardGridView.swift # Horizontal scroll + context menus
├── StatusBarView.swift # Item count + capture status
├── QuickLookPreviewView.swift # Spacebar full preview
├── PinboardEditorView.swift # Create/edit pinboard sheet
├── SmartRuleEditorView.swift # Rule condition builder
├── SnippetEditorView.swift # Snippet editor + template vars
├── PreferencesView.swift # 5-tab settings window
├── AppearancePrefsView.swift # Theme customization UI
├── MarkdownPreviewView.swift # WKWebView markdown renderer
└── PasteStackOverlayView.swift # Floating collection indicator
| Layer | Technology | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Language | Swift 5.9+ | Native performance, zero runtime overhead |
| UI | SwiftUI + AppKit | Modern declarative UI with native window management |
| Storage | SQLite3 via C interop | WAL mode, 6 indexes, scales to 1M+ entries |
| Hotkeys | Carbon EventHotKey | System-wide shortcuts that work in any app |
| Paste | CoreGraphics CGEvent | Simulates ⌘V into the frontmost application |
| Hashing | CryptoKit SHA-256 | Content deduplication |
| Markdown | WKWebView | Custom renderer with dark mode CSS |
| Updates | URLSession + GitHub Pages | Zero-server version checking |
| Login | ServiceManagement | Native launch-at-login without helper apps |
EverClip is built to handle 1,000,000+ clipboard entries without breaking a sweat.
| Operation | How |
|---|---|
| Search | SQL LIKE with debounced queries (200ms) — never filters in memory |
| Dedup | O(1) Set<String> hash cache + DB index fallback |
| Sidebar counts | SELECT COUNT(*) with indexes, not array scans |
| Pruning | NOT EXISTS subquery with entry_id index |
| Capture | In-memory window capped at 500 entries, DB is source of truth |
| Smart rules | Only enabled rules loaded, evaluated per-capture |
Customize everything in Preferences → Appearance:
| Setting | Range |
|---|---|
| Appearance | System / Light / Dark |
| Accent color | 9 presets + custom hex |
| UI scale | 75% – 140% |
| Font scale | 75% – 140% |
| Card size | Compact / Default / Large |
| Drawer material | 6 macOS vibrancy materials |
| Corner radius | 0 – 32px |
All settings persist to SQLite and apply live.
EverClip is MIT licensed. PRs welcome.
# Clone
git clone https://github.com/thornebridge/everclip.git
cd everclip
# Build + run
swift build && .build/debug/EverClip
# Release build + DMG
bash scripts/build.shThe codebase is intentionally simple: 49 Swift files, zero external dependencies, no Xcode project needed. Just Swift Package Manager.