ClipSnapper Support

Getting started

ClipSnapper runs on macOS 14 or later, and iOS or iPadOS 17 or later.

1. Open ClipSnapper and read the welcome screen.
2. Choose whether to enable Sync with iCloud. Leave it off to keep your history on this device; new installations start with it off.
3. Select Get Started. On Mac, ClipSnapper begins saving clipboard changes while it runs. On iPhone and iPad, add something through another app’s Share menu.

Screen capture and direct paste on Mac ask for their own permissions when you use them. You can change the iCloud choice later in Settings.

Your clipboard on Mac

Open the clipboard bar from ClipSnapper’s menu or your configured keyboard shortcut. Text, links, images and file clippings appear as cards. Search your history, filter by source app or content type, or browse older items with the date navigator that appears during fast scrolling.

Copy, paste and organise

• Click once to select a card. Press ⌘C to copy it while keeping the carousel open.
• Press Return, double-click, or use ⌘1–⌘9 to paste and close the carousel.
• Press ⇧⌘C to copy text or a link without line breaks. Selected text keeps its usual copy behaviour.
• Create named, coloured clip groups for favourites and frequently used items. Use the card’s context menu to organise it.
• Right-click a card and choose Save as… to export it. Set a default folder for image and text exports in Settings → General → Saving.

Direct paste requires macOS Accessibility permission. Without it, the clipping is still copied, so you can paste manually with ⌘V. A file clipping may be a reference to the original file, rather than a portable copy.

Screenshots & markup

Capture on Mac

Press ⇧⌘2 or choose Capture Area, then drag a rectangle. The area picker freezes the screen so you can capture an open menu or tooltip. Escape cancels. Use the toolbar for a full-screen capture, a scrolling capture, or a 3, 5 or 10 second timer.

To repeat your last saved area, press ⌥⇧⌘2. Full-screen capture uses the display containing the pointer when invoked from the menu.

Capture a scrolling page

1. Choose Scrolling Capture and select the scrolling content. Leave fixed toolbars and sidebars outside the rectangle.
2. Scroll downward slowly yourself, following the on-screen guidance. If the images lose overlap, move back until they align.
3. Choose Finish to save, or Cancel to discard. At the size limit, Finish saves the portion already captured.

Scrolling is manually controlled and does not need Accessibility permission. Screen capture does need macOS screen recording permission; follow any request to reopen the app.

Finish the picture

Completed captures go to history and the clipboard. Hover over the screenshot preview and choose Markup to crop, annotate, highlight, add text or arrows, and redact. Pin the preview if you want it to stay. Change its duration in Settings → General → Screen capture.

The Redact tool covers pixels with solid black blocks in the copied or saved PNG. Check the finished export before sharing. Redacting an export does not remove earlier originals, backups or copies you have shared.

On Mac, right-click an image and choose Copy Text, or use Extract Text in Markup. Recognition runs locally; Mac search can also find text inside images. If no text is recognised, the clipboard stays unchanged.

On iPhone & iPad

1. In another app, open the Share menu for text, a link or an image. For a screenshot, use its Share button.
2. Choose ClipSnapper. If it isn’t visible, look in the Share menu’s list of additional apps.
3. Open ClipSnapper to browse or search saved clippings and clip groups. Tap an item to copy it, then paste into your destination app.
4. Use an image’s Preview button to open it for cropping, drawing, annotations and redaction, then copy or share the result.

ClipSnapper does not automatically monitor the iPhone or iPad clipboard. Capturing other apps’ screens, scrolling capture, colour picking and image text recognition described above are Mac features. Take iOS screenshots with your device’s usual screenshot controls, then share them into ClipSnapper.

Bring your clippings together with iCloud

Sign in to the same iCloud account on your devices and enable Sync with iCloud in each installation. Your saved clippings and clip groups use your private iCloud database. Existing local items can upload when you first enable sync.

• On Mac, use the menu’s sync command or Settings → iCloud.
• On iPhone and iPad, tap the cloud status badge for details and Sync Now.
• For a first sync or a large image library, keep the app open and allow time for downloads. Background timing is managed by the operating system.

Turning sync off stops new changes syncing on that device. It does not erase local history or content already in iCloud. To remove synced items, delete them with sync enabled and let the changes reach your other devices.

File paths and access references from one Mac may not open on another device. Sync is useful for a shared library, but is not a substitute for a separate backup.

Colours & shortcuts on Mac

Choose Pick Colour or press ⌥⌘C. Click a point in the system magnifier to copy its colour; Escape cancels. Recent Colours lets you copy HEX, RGB, RGBA, HSL or SwiftUI values. Pick a default format and recent-colour limit in Settings → Colours.

Change or disable keyboard combinations in Settings → Shortcuts. If another app already uses one, choose a different combination or release it in the other app and retry.

In Apple Shortcuts on Mac, ClipSnapper supplies Capture Area, Copy Latest Clipping and Copy Clipping from Group. Capture Area returns a PNG for the next action. The copy actions copy without pasting into another app.

Privacy, storage & backups

On Mac, Settings → Privacy lets you exclude applications from future automatic captures. This does not remove items you already saved. ClipSnapper also skips content marked as concealed, transient or automatically generated by its source app, but these markers cannot identify every sensitive item. Quit ClipSnapper to stop automatic capture.

Settings → History on Mac contains retention, storage, clear-history and backup controls. Choose a retention period from one day to forever. Save a backup somewhere protected before making major changes, and remember that separate exports and backups need to be managed separately.

For details of deletion, iCloud, diagnostics and your choices, read the ClipSnapper privacy policy.

When something needs a nudge