Open-source AI clipboard manager and text selection toolbar for macOS
Clipboard history for every format, a PopClip-style toolbar on any selected text, and an AI agent that can search, organize and edit everything you have copied.
PastAi is an open-source, native Mac clipboard manager in the spirit of Paste, with a text selection toolbar in the spirit of PopClip, and an AI agent built into both. It is written in Swift with system frameworks only, so a small download does what several apps usually do, and nothing you copy passes through third-party code.
| Clipboard history | Text, rich text, images, video, audio, files and app-private formats, restored exactly when pasted |
| Selection toolbar | Select text in any app and a small bar appears at your cursor |
| Extension market | 30 built-in extensions for search, shopping, social, maps and AI, for US and Chinese services |
| AI agent | Bring your own model to search, tag, merge, rewrite and clean up your library |
| Fast search | Full-text search with proper Chinese support, plus OCR text inside images |
| Private by design | Local storage, per-board AI visibility, and approval before the agent changes anything |
| English and Chinese | Follows your system language, including extensions |
Get the latest notarized build from Releases, open the DMG and drag PastAi to Applications.
Requires macOS 26 or later on Apple silicon.
PastAi lives in the menu bar. On first use it asks for Accessibility permission, which it needs to read selected text and to paste into other apps. Without the permission, history and search still work, and pasting falls back to the clipboard.
Press ⇧⌘V and the panel slides up from the bottom of the screen, over the Dock, without taking focus from the app you are working in.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
⇧⌘V |
Open or close the panel (configurable) |
← → |
Move between cards, hold ⇧ to select several |
↩ / ⇧↩ |
Paste / paste as plain text |
⌘1 to ⌘9 |
Paste the Nth card |
Space |
Quick Look preview |
| Just type | Search |
⌘F |
Show filters by type, source app and date |
⌘← ⌘→ or ⌘[ ⌘] |
Switch tabs |
⌘E / ⌘R |
Edit / rename |
⌘N |
New text clip |
⌘J |
Send the selection to the agent |
⌘T |
Pause recording |
⌘⌫ |
Delete |
Esc |
Clear the search, then close |
Pinboards keep what matters: they never expire. You can also pin built-in categories such as Images or Links as tabs in Settings. Copies from password managers are skipped, and you can exclude any app.
The clip you just used moves to the first card, so whatever you reach for stays one keystroke away.
Files stay where they are. Copy a file or a whole folder and PastAi records its path instead of a copy, so your library stays small however large the files are. Pasting uses the original, and PastAi tells you if it has been moved or deleted. Screenshots are the exception: there may be no other copy, so PastAi keeps one.
Open Settings > Storage and choose Import. PastAi reads Paste's library without changing it and brings over your history, Pinboards, titles, source apps and original dates. Anything a password manager marks as secret stays behind, and a Pinboard with a name like Passwords is hidden from AI. Importing again never creates duplicates. Imported history follows your retention setting, counted from the day you import.
Select text in any app, by dragging or double-clicking, and a toolbar appears at your cursor.
Four extensions are on by default:
- Copy
- Translate runs through your AI model and streams into a small popover. The result is added to your clipboard, ready to paste anywhere, and Insert replaces the original text in place.
- Google searches the web.
- WhatsApp opens WhatsApp's own contact picker with your selection, or goes straight to a contact you set and can press send for you.
The toolbar never takes focus, which is why Insert can replace your selection directly. Extensions only appear when they apply: Open Link only shows for a URL, and Paste only in editable text.
Open Settings > Extensions to drag the toolbar into order, delete extensions, configure each one and browse the market. The market is the extensions folder of this repository, fetched straight from GitHub, with a copy inside the app so it works offline.
| Category | Extensions |
|---|---|
| Text | Copy, Paste, Change Case, Word Count, Open Link |
| AI | Translate, Summarize, Polish, Explain, ChatGPT |
| US services | Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon, Reddit, X, GitHub, WhatsApp, Gmail |
| China services | Baidu, Zhihu, Weibo, Bilibili, Taobao, JD.com, Xiaohongshu, Douban, Amap, WeChat |
Every extension follows one manifest format, with six action types: open a URL or app link, launch an app, copy, paste, run sandboxed JavaScript, or call your AI model. See docs/EXTENSIONS.md to write your own.
Or ask the agent. Describe what you want, for example "add a button that turns a URL into a Markdown link", and the agent writes the extension, tests it on sample text, and installs it after you approve.
There is deliberately no shell or AppleScript action. Extensions are downloaded code, so they can only open links and apps, call your model, or compute in a JavaScript sandbox with no network or file access. Each script runs in its own process and is killed if it hangs.
Open the main window and ask for what you want:
- "Sort this week's links into pinboards by topic"
- "Find the nginx config I copied last month"
- "Merge these five clips into clean Markdown"
- "Turn the table in this screenshot into CSV"
- "Clear out duplicates and old screenshots"
Add a provider in Settings > AI Models. PastAi speaks the OpenAI-compatible protocol, which covers OpenAI, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, GLM, OpenRouter, Ollama and LM Studio, plus the native Anthropic API. Keys are stored in the macOS Keychain.
With Ollama or LM Studio, nothing leaves your Mac.
These rules are enforced in code rather than by asking the model nicely:
- Local by default. Your library stays in
~/Library/Application Support/PastAi. - Hidden means hidden. Hide a clip or a whole pinboard from AI and it is filtered out in the database query, so the agent cannot read it even by ID. Text that looks like a credential is hidden automatically.
- Approval. Reading is automatic. Changing or deleting content, and installing an extension, always needs your confirmation, and "allow for this conversation" never covers those.
- Undo. Everything the agent changes in a run can be undone in one click.
- Clipboard text is data. Copied content cannot instruct the agent, and the agent has no network, file or shell tools, so your content only ever goes to the model you configured.
- Consent. The first time content would go to a cloud provider, PastAi asks.
Xcode is not needed beyond its command line tools.
git clone https://github.com/skingko/PastAi.git
cd PastAi
./scripts/build.sh debug # or release
swift testThe app is written to ~/Library/Caches/PastAi/dist/PastAi.app. With a Developer ID certificate in your keychain it is signed automatically; otherwise it is signed ad hoc, and macOS asks for Accessibility again after each build.
scripts/release.sh builds a signed, notarized DMG in dist/.
App/ Composition root: menu bar, hotkey, lifecycle
Sources/
ClipCore/ Capture, storage, search, paste. No UI, no AI
ClipEnrich/ Thumbnails, media metadata, OCR
ClipExtensions/ Manifests, validation, JavaScript sandbox, market
ClipImport/ Importing from Paste
QuickPanel/ The clipboard panel
SelectionBar/ The selection toolbar and result popover
ClipAgent/ Model clients, tools, approvals, agent loop
Workspace/ Main window, chat and settings
extensions/ The extension market
QuickPanel and SelectionBar link no AI code, so copy and paste keep working if a model is misconfigured. All changes to the library go through one code path and one undo log, for people and for the agent alike.
New extensions are the easiest way to help: add a folder under extensions, run python3 scripts/build-extension-index.py, and open a pull request. It appears in everyone's market as soon as it merges.
PastAi is released under the MIT License.
Brand icons in extensions come from Simple Icons (CC0). The logos remain trademarks of their owners, and the license above does not grant any rights to them.
Open source clipboard manager for Mac, Paste alternative, PopClip alternative, macOS text selection toolbar, AI translation on selected text, clipboard history with OCR, AI agent for macOS, Ollama and local LLM clipboard tool.