HoverTap the notch

iCloud On Search Clipboard History Client · Acme

Clipboard history

Capture once. Reuse anywhere.

Text, links, files, screenshots, and screen recordings — captured from the notch, kept in one searchable panel, sorted into Pages, synced through your own iCloud, and handed to anyone as a link.

Download for macOS

Free to start · Private by default · macOS 14 or later

Your clipboard, wherever you need it

A working day leaves a trail: the snippet you copied an hour ago, the screenshot from before lunch, the recording you owe a teammate. PasteNotch keeps the whole trail in one place on your Mac — searchable, organized, and one keystroke away.

  • Clipboard history
  • Screenshots
  • Screen recording
  • Area OCR
  • Pages
  • Locked Pages
  • Cloud portal
  • iCloud Sync
  • Search anything
  • Privacy first
  • ⇧⌘V

Clipboard history

History that lives in the notch

PasteNotch watches the clipboard and files every copy — text, links, images, and real file references — next to the app it came from and the moment it landed. Press ⇧⌘V and the island drops out of the notch with your recent clips already sorted. Pick one to copy it, or let PasteNotch paste it straight into the app you were typing in.

  • Free keeps the newest 100 unsaved clips. Pro keeps them all.
  • Pin what you reuse; saved clips are never pruned.
  • Concealed pasteboard content from password managers is skipped.

Screenshots & area OCR

Screenshots that already know what they say

Grab an area or the whole display without leaving the keyboard. Every screenshot lands in history with its text recognized on-device, so searching invoice brings back the picture of an invoice. There is a shortcut for the words alone, too: draw a box around anything on screen — a terminal, a PDF, a paused video — and only the text inside it goes to your clipboard.

  • Capture area, capture full screen, and copy text from area each get their own shortcut.
  • Recognition runs locally through Vision. Nothing is uploaded to read it.
  • Filter search down to clips that carry recognized text.

Screen recording

Record the screen, send the link

Start a recording of the screen under the pointer with one shortcut. A small bar parks itself outside the recorded region — elapsed time, a stop button, and, when the microphone is on, a live level meter so you can see it hears you before you talk for five minutes. Stop, and the video is waiting in history.

  • The control bar never appears in the footage it controls.
  • Mute mid-take without ending the recording.
  • With PasteNotch Cloud on, the file uploads in the background and the share link lands on your clipboard.

Pages

Pages keep the pile sorted

Pages are boards you drop clips onto — one per client, per ticket, per trip. Anything saved to a Page survives history cleanup for good. Lock a Page with a password and its clips leave the panel, the search results, and the tab strip until you type it back in.

  • Reorder Page tabs, colour them, and pick an icon per board.
  • Hand a whole Page to another PasteNotch user as a single .clipstorypage file they import.
  • The lock is a privacy gate, not a vault — it hides contents, it does not encrypt them.

Cloud portal

Every capture, open in a browser

PasteNotch Cloud gives your uploads a home on the web at app.pastenotch.com. Ask for a magic link, click it, and the gallery is there — screenshots and recordings side by side, videos playing inline, durations on the tiles. There is no password to keep, because there is no password.

  • Search matches file names, the app a capture came from, and the caption PasteNotch writes for each image automatically.
  • Originals stay private until you create a share link — and any link can be revoked from the same page.
  • 25 GB of managed storage is included with Cloud.

Quick paste & search

⇧⌘V, then type

The panel opens over whatever you are doing and gets out of the way the moment you are done. Type to search across clip text, recognized screenshot text, link titles, file names, and source apps, then narrow it with filters for kind, app, date, pinned, saved, or "has recognized text".

  • ⌥⌘V walks back through recent copies one paste at a time.
  • Copying always works; pasting into the app in front needs macOS Accessibility.
  • Every shortcut is re-recordable in Settings, with a warning if two collide.

Built for everything you copy

The same handful of things get copied all day, by everyone. PasteNotch just stops them from disappearing.

Designers

Hex values, export paths, reference shots and the one line of feedback that mattered — kept together instead of scattered across three apps.

Developers

Stack traces, container IDs, one-off commands, the token you needed twice. Search by the app it came from when you cannot remember the words.

Content

Headlines you rejected an hour ago and now want back, quotes, links, alt text. Pin a Page per piece and the draft trail stays intact.

Support

The same five answers, all day. Save them to a Page, hit ⇧⌘V, type two letters, send. Record a 30-second repro and paste the link into the ticket.

Founders

Deck links, pricing lines, intro blurbs, the same three paragraphs of context per investor. One board, reused in every thread.

Personal

Booking references, tracking numbers, the wifi password at the place you are staying. Anything that looks like a secret gets masked and can expire on its own.

Simple pricing. Start free.

One purchase for the app itself. A subscription only if you want PasteNotch to host your screenshots and recordings.

Free

$0

The newest 100 unsaved clips.

  • Clipboard history in the notch
  • Search, filters, and pinning
  • Everything stays on this Mac
Download for macOS
Most people want this

Pro Lifetime

$4.99once

Unlimited history, Pages, OCR, capture tools, and private iCloud sync.

  • Unlimited clipboard history
  • Pages, locked Pages, and Page export
  • Screenshots, area OCR, screen recording
  • Sync through your own iCloud
Get Pro

PasteNotch Cloud

$2.99/month

Everything in Pro plus 25 GB for screenshot links.

  • Everything in Pro
  • 25 GB of managed storage
  • Share links you can revoke
  • The web portal at app.pastenotch.com
Get Cloud

Secure checkout by Polar.sh. Paid plans activate from a license key you paste into PasteNotch → Settings → Plan, and keep working for a week at a time without a network.

iPhone app

Coming soon

A pocket-sized PasteNotch — the same history, the same Pages, the same search — is on the way. No store link yet; it will appear right here the day it ships.

Questions, answered

Where does my clipboard history actually live?

On your Mac, in PasteNotch's own local store. Nothing leaves the machine by default. Turn on sync and it moves through your own iCloud private database. Turn on Cloud uploads and only the screenshots or recordings you capture go to managed storage — never the rest of your history.

Does PasteNotch have an account or a server?

No account for the app itself. Sync is your iCloud, not ours, so there is no PasteNotch login to create and no shared database to breach. PasteNotch Cloud is the one exception: it is opt-in, it stores only what you upload, and it signs you in to the portal with an emailed link rather than a password.

What is in the free plan?

Clipboard history with the newest 100 unsaved clips, the notch panel, search, filters, and pinning — for as long as you want, with no trial timer. Pages, area OCR, the capture tools, and iCloud sync are part of Pro.

What do the paid plans cost?

Pro Lifetime is $4.99 once. PasteNotch Cloud is $2.99 per month and includes everything in Pro plus 25 GB of managed storage. Checkout runs on Polar.sh; you paste the license key it gives you into PasteNotch → Settings → Plan.

I have been using PasteNotch since before there were plans. What happens to me?

Nothing changes. Installs that predate paid plans are grandfathered into Pro permanently — the Plan pane will say "Early Supporter".

Do I need PasteNotch Cloud to take screenshots or record the screen?

No. Screenshots, area OCR, and screen recording are Pro features and work entirely offline. Cloud adds three things on top: background upload, a share link on your clipboard, and the web portal.

How do share links work, and can I take one back?

An uploaded capture stays private until you create a link for it. Share links are never cached by the browser, and revoking a link cuts off access immediately — after which it stops resolving. Deleting the object removes it outright.

What are locked Pages?

A password gate on a single board. While it is locked, its clips vanish from the panel, from search results, and from the tab strip until you type the password. Be clear-eyed about what it is: a privacy lock that hides content from someone glancing at your screen, not encryption. Do not treat it as a password vault.

Can I share a Page with someone else?

Yes — export it as a single .clipstorypage file and send it however you like. On import, any clips the recipient already has are matched by content hash instead of duplicated. It is a handover, not a live shared board: there is no ongoing sync and no way to recall the copy.

Which macOS permissions does it ask for?

Screen & System Audio Recording for screenshots, area OCR, and screen recording — requested the first time you use one of them, never at launch. Accessibility only so PasteNotch can paste into the app in front of you; copying works fine without it. Microphone only if you record with the mic on.

Will it capture my passwords?

PasteNotch skips clipboard items marked concealed, transient, or auto-generated, which is what password managers set. On top of that, a conservative heuristic flags things that look like one-time codes, API tokens, private keys, or card numbers: previews are masked and the clip can expire on its own.

What do I need to run it?

macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Download the ZIP, move PasteNotch to Applications, and it updates itself from then on. An iPhone companion is in progress — see the note above.

Get PasteNotch

A signed and notarized Mac build, delivered as a ZIP. Unzip it, move it to Applications, and press ⇧⌘V.

Download for macOS

Free to start · Private by default · macOS 14 or later