A Maccy alternative with more built in
Maccy is a free, open-source clipboard manager that does one job and does it quickly. If that is all you need, it is hard to argue with. Maclip is for people who want more around the history. Here is the honest difference.
Updated
What Maccy is
Maccy, by Alex Rodionov, describes itself as a clipboard manager that does only one job: keep your copy history and let you get to it fast. It is keyboard-first and lightweight, stores everything on your Mac, respects password managers, and is open source under the MIT licence. It is free and needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
Where Maclip is different
- Organising. Boards with colours and icons, and tags, for the things you reuse.
- Text inside images. Copied screenshots are read with on-device OCR, so their words are searchable.
- Smart actions. Format JSON, Base64, clean links and change case before you paste.
- Search syntax.
app:,type:,tag:,board:andis:pinned, plus search by meaning. - Encryption at rest. AES-GCM-256, with the key in your login Keychain.
- Shortcuts actions for automations, reachable from Raycast and Alfred too.
Side by side
| Maclip | Maccy | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $3.99 once, then $7.99 | Free |
| Source code | Closed | Open source (MIT) |
| Approach | History plus tools around it | One job, no extras |
| Boards and tags | Yes | Not listed on its site |
| Text inside images | Yes, on-device OCR | Not listed on its site |
| Encrypted history | Yes, AES-GCM-256 | Not listed on its site |
| Password managers | Ignored automatically | Respected |
| Requires | macOS 13 or later | macOS 14 or later |
What Maclip does not do
- It is not free. Maccy is, and says it always will be.
- It is not open source. You cannot read Maclip's code the way you can read Maccy's.
- It is not minimal. If extra features feel like clutter, Maccy's restraint is the whole point.
Which one you actually want
- You want free, open source and nothing else. Maccy.
- You want to organise, transform, and search inside images. Maclip.
- You are on macOS 13 Ventura. Maclip runs there; Maccy needs 14.