Clipy deserves a respectful send-off. For years it was the answer when a Mac user asked for a free clipboard manager: open-source, lightweight, and built on the bones of the much-loved ClipMenu. It asked for nothing and just worked.
That’s no longer true. Development has stalled, the official build is Intel-only, and each new macOS release breaks a little more of it. If you’re searching “clipy not working” right now, this guide is for you: what’s happening to Clipy, and which clipboard manager for Mac to use instead.
What made Clipy great
Clipy was the open-source successor to ClipMenu, one of the original Mac clipboard managers. When ClipMenu’s developer open-sourced the code, Clipy picked it up, modernized it in Swift, and kept it free.
Three things made it a fixture in so many menu bars:
- It was completely free. No trial, no upsell, no ads. Open-source under an MIT license.
- Snippets. Clipy’s killer feature. You could save reusable text — email templates, code blocks, addresses — in organized folders and paste them from the menu or a hotkey. For many users, this mattered more than the history itself.
- It stayed out of the way. A simple menu bar dropdown, low memory use, no dock icon, no fuss.
Clipy didn’t try to be impressive. It tried to be invisible — and for almost a decade, that was exactly right.
None of what follows is criticism of the people who built it. Unpaid open-source maintenance is hard, and Clipy delivered enormous value for free. But software that stops moving on macOS eventually stops working.
Why people are leaving Clipy
The problem isn’t one dramatic failure — it’s slow decay on an operating system that changes every year.
The clock is ticking on Clipy’s official build. The last official release is an Intel-only binary. On Apple Silicon Macs it runs through Rosetta 2 — and Apple has announced Rosetta is being wound down. When Rosetta goes, the official Clipy build won’t launch at all.
Here’s what users on modern macOS are running into:
- Stalled development. The official GitHub repository has had no meaningful activity for years. Issues accumulate — including serious crash reports — without responses or fixes.
- Crashes on macOS Sequoia. Users report that opening “Edit Snippets…” terminates the app, and clicking the Shortcuts button in Preferences does the same. The two features that defined Clipy are the ones breaking first.
- Accessibility permission loops. On recent macOS versions, Clipy repeatedly asks for Accessibility access even after it’s been granted — a side effect of unsigned or inconsistently signed builds meeting macOS’s stricter permission model.
- No native Apple Silicon build. Community forks have produced unofficial Apple Silicon versions, but they’re not maintained by the original project, and installing unsigned forks of a clipboard manager — an app that reads everything you copy — is a real trust decision.
That last point matters. A clipboard manager sees passwords, client data, and private messages. Running an unmaintained one, or a random fork of one, is exactly the place not to take chances.
So what should you use instead? Here are four alternatives, ranked.
1. QuietClip — the modern, maintained replacement
QuietClip is what Clipy would look like if it were rebuilt today: a native menu bar app for macOS 14+, written in modern Swift, that stores everything locally and never touches the network.
It also goes past where Clipy stopped. Clipy was text-focused; QuietClip captures text, images, and files, with previews, instant search, and pins for items you reuse constantly.
The honest cons: QuietClip isn’t open-source, and the full feature set costs money. The free tier covers 25 text items and 3 pins; Pro is $8.99 — once, not per year — for history up to 1,000 items, image and file support, and unlimited pins. If “free forever” is non-negotiable, look at Maccy below. But $8.99 one time is a fair trade for software that’s actually maintained.
Clipy users who want the same quiet menu-bar philosophy with modern macOS support, image and file history, and a maintained codebase. Closest overall replacement, especially if you used snippets.
2. Maccy — the free, open-source spirit successor
If what you loved about Clipy was the free open-source part, Maccy is your app. It’s actively maintained, popular on GitHub, runs natively on Apple Silicon, and does text clipboard history with excellent fuzzy search.
Pros: free, open-source, fast, tiny footprint, actively developed — everything Clipy was, minus the abandonment.
Cons: it’s deliberately minimal. There’s no snippet system, no rich image and file handling like QuietClip’s, and the dropdown UI is functional rather than polished. If snippets were your main Clipy use case, Maccy alone won’t cover you.
We’ve compared the two in depth in QuietClip vs. Maccy, and Maccy also features in our roundup of the best free clipboard managers for Mac.
3. Raycast Clipboard History — if you want a launcher too
Raycast is a Spotlight replacement with clipboard history built in, and the clipboard part is genuinely good: text and images, fast search, keyboard-driven, free.
Pros: free clipboard history, polished UI, actively developed, native Apple Silicon.
Cons: Raycast is a whole productivity platform, not a clipboard manager. Installing it just for clipboard history means adopting a launcher, an extensions ecosystem, and an account-optional cloud product from a venture-backed company. That’s a very different footprint from a 5 MB menu bar utility — and a different privacy posture than a local-only tool. If you already use Raycast, enable its clipboard history and you may be done. If you don’t, it’s a lot of app for one feature.
4. Flycut — minimal open-source, for text-only diehards
Flycut is a free, open-source clipboard manager aimed at developers, descended from the old Jumpcut project. It keeps a stack of plain-text clippings you cycle through with a hotkey.
Pros: free, open-source, dead simple, very light.
Cons: plain text only — no images, files, or formatting — and the interface hasn’t changed much in years. Development is slow, which is an uncomfortable echo of how Clipy got here. It’s a fine stopgap, but you’d be trading one sleepy project for another. We’ve written a full QuietClip vs. Flycut comparison if you’re weighing it seriously.
Migrating from Clipy: what you lose, what replaces it
The 15-minute Clipy exit plan
- Open Clipy and go through your snippet folders. Copy out the snippets you actually use — for most people it’s 10–20 items, not hundreds.
- Install your replacement (QuietClip, Maccy, Raycast, or Flycut) and grant Accessibility permission once.
- Recreate your key snippets: in QuietClip, paste each one and pin it so it never expires. Free covers 3 pins; Pro makes them unlimited.
- Quit Clipy and remove it from Login Items. Don’t run two clipboard managers at once.
The one thing nothing replaces one-to-one is Clipy’s snippet folders. No major alternative imports them, and only some have an equivalent feature at all.
The closest functional substitute is QuietClip’s pins: pinned items sit permanently at the top of your history, survive restarts, and paste with a click or keystroke. It’s the same job — instant access to reusable text — with less folder ceremony. If you maintained a serious snippet collection in Clipy, our guide to building a personal snippet library walks through recreating it properly.
Clipboard history itself doesn’t migrate either, but that’s no real loss — a day of normal copying rebuilds it.
Verdict: which Clipy alternative should you pick?
- Want the closest overall replacement, snippets included? QuietClip. Modern, maintained, local-only, with pins covering the snippet workflow and image/file support Clipy never had.
- Want to stay free and open-source? Maccy. It’s the truest heir to Clipy’s spirit, as long as text-only history is enough.
- Already use Raycast? Turn on its clipboard history before installing anything else.
- Want the absolute minimum? Flycut — with the caveat that it moves slowly too.
Clipy earned its place in thousands of menu bars, and it owes nobody anything. But a clipboard manager sees everything you copy, and “unmaintained” is the one thing it can’t afford to be. It’s time to switch.
Replace Clipy in under a minute.
QuietClip keeps your clipboard history on your Mac — text, images, and files. Native Apple Silicon, zero network connections, actively maintained. Free to start, $8.99 once for Pro.