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How to paste several things at once on a Mac

Copying a name, an email and a company into a form usually means three trips back and forth between two windows. A paste stack lets you pick all three first and paste them in one go, with Tab in between so each lands in its own field.

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Why the Mac can't do this on its own

The clipboard holds a single item. ⌘C replaces whatever was there, so pasting several things in order means copying and pasting each one in turn. A clipboard manager keeps everything you copied, which makes it possible to pick several items and paste them as a sequence.

Paste a stack

  1. Click where the first item should go, then press ⌘⇧V. Maclip opens at the text cursor.
  2. Move to a clip and press ⌘↵ to add it to the stack. A number shows its place in the order. Do the same for the rest.
  3. Choose what to press between clips in the bar at the bottom: Return, Tab, Space or Nothing.
  4. Press Return. Maclip pastes each clip in order.

Merge clips into one

Sometimes you want one block of text instead: a list of links for a message, or notes gathered from several pages.

  1. In the dashboard, select the clips you want. Hold ⌘ and click each one.
  2. Click Merge in the bar that appears.
  3. Drag the clips into order and pick a style: new lines, a blank line between each, a bullet list, a numbered list, commas or spaces.
  4. Click Paste, Copy, or Save as Clip to keep the merged text in your history.

In the ⌘⇧V panel, a stack can be pasted merged too: press ⌥↵ instead of ↵.

Questions

Can I change the order after adding clips?

Yes. In the panel, press ⌘↵ on a clip again to take it out, then add it back where you want it. In the dashboard's Paste Stack and Merge window you can drag clips into any order.

Does a paste stack keep formatting?

Each clip is pasted the way the app you're pasting into prefers. If you have set a paste rule for that app, for example plain text for Slack, it applies to every clip in the stack.

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