CopyClip vs CopyClip 2 — Is the Upgrade Worth It?

CopyClip is one of the most downloaded clipboard managers on the Mac App Store — over 3 million installs. It’s free, it’s simple, and for a lot of people, it was their first clipboard manager.

Then FIPLAB released CopyClip 2, a paid upgrade at €8.99. Same developer, same name, different app. If you’ve been using the original, you’ve probably wondered: is CopyClip 2 actually worth paying for?

Let’s look at what each version offers and whether either one still makes sense in 2026.

CopyClip 1 — what you get

CopyClip lives in your menu bar. Click the icon, and you see a plain list of your recently copied text. That’s essentially the entire app.

What it does:

• Stores a configurable number of recent text clips (up to 600)
• Lives in the menu bar — click to see history, click an item to copy it
• Lets you set a keyboard shortcut to open the list
• Supports exclusion of specific apps
• Free

What it doesn’t do:

• No search
• No images or files — text only
• No pinning or favorites
• No preview of long items
• No modern UI — it’s a plain menu bar dropdown

For a free app, CopyClip 1 does its job. But “its job” hasn’t changed in years. The interface looks the same as it did in 2018, and the feature set hasn’t grown.

CopyClip 2 — what the upgrade adds

CopyClip 2 is a separate paid app (€8.99) from the same developer. The main additions:

Search. You can type to filter your clipboard history. This is the single biggest improvement — without search, finding a clip from an hour ago in a list of hundreds is painful.

Pinned clips. Save frequently-used snippets permanently. Useful for email templates, code snippets, or addresses you paste regularly.

Themes. Dark mode and visual customization. Purely cosmetic, but the default CopyClip 1 look is dated enough that it matters.

Larger history. CopyClip 2 supports up to 1,000 items.

Side-by-side comparison

The real issue with both

The fundamental problem isn’t CopyClip 1 vs CopyClip 2. It’s that both apps are built on the same aging foundation:

Text only. In 2026, a clipboard manager that can’t handle images is incomplete. Designers copy color swatches and screenshots. Developers copy error outputs with formatting. Writers copy entire formatted paragraphs. Text-only means you’re constantly losing non-text copies.

Menu bar UI. Both CopyClip versions use a dropdown menu from the menu bar. It works, but it’s slow to navigate compared to a Spotlight-style panel with keyboard-first interaction. You can’t search-then-paste in one fluid motion.

Maintenance concerns. FIPLAB maintains a large portfolio of small Mac utilities. Neither CopyClip version receives frequent updates beyond macOS compatibility fixes. If you’re paying €8.99, you’d reasonably expect active development.

Cross-promotion. CopyClip 2 occasionally surfaces promotions for other FIPLAB apps within the interface. For a paid utility, this feels out of place.

A modern alternative

If you’re a CopyClip user thinking about the upgrade, it’s worth asking: should you upgrade within the same product line, or switch to something built for how people work today?

The price is similar to CopyClip 2, but you get image support, a modern UI, and an app built with current Apple frameworks rather than one carrying years of legacy code.

If cross-device sync matters to you, neither CopyClip nor QuietClip offers it — you’d need to look at Paste ($30/year) for that. But for a local clipboard manager on a single Mac, QuietClip gives you significantly more for the same price.