Clypy vs Maccy: one Mac, or all of them
Maccy is free, open source, fast, and does exactly one thing on one platform. That is a legitimate design choice, and for a lot of people it is the right one. Clypy is what you reach for when one machine stops being enough.
Maccy is a great piece of software
Three questions. If every answer is no, keep Maccy.
- 01
Do you work on more than one computer?
Maccy is deliberately a single-Mac tool with no sync. Clypy's premise is that you copy on one machine and need it on another twenty minutes later.
- 02
Do you want your clipboard on your phone?
Clypy's iPhone and Android keyboard pastes anything from your history into any app. Maccy has no mobile side.
- 03
Do you search for things you can't word exactly?
If you always remember the words you copied, text search is enough. If you remember what it was about, search by meaning helps.
Finding the clip you can't quite describe
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Free is a real advantage
We are not going to argue that $29.99 beats $0 on price. Clypy's free plan also keeps unlimited local history at no cost; Pro, paid once, buys cross-device encrypted sync, the Paste Strip and the mobile keyboards. If you do not want those, do not buy them.
Clypy vs Maccy, line by line
| Feature | Clypy | Maccy |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | ||
| Windows, Linux, iOS, Android | ||
| Open source | ||
| Price | Free, or $29.99 once for Pro | Free |
| Cross-device sync | End-to-end encrypted, LAN or relay | |
| Send files between devices | On your network, end-to-end encrypted | |
| Search by meaning | Semantic, on-device | Text match |
| OCR on screenshots | ||
| Templates with fill-in fields | ||
| Collections |
Which one should you use?
You work on a single Mac, you want open source you can audit, and you want to spend nothing.
Maccy's siteWhat Maccy users ask
Is Clypy open source like Maccy?
No. The clients are closed source today, which is a genuine trade-off if auditability matters to you. The security page documents the encryption model in detail, but documentation is not the same thing as source you can read.
Can I run Maccy and Clypy together?
Technically yes, but two clipboard managers watching the same clipboard tends to produce duplicate entries and shortcut conflicts. Pick one.
Does Clypy have a free tier that competes with Maccy?
Yes. Clypy free gives you unlimited local clipboard history, collections, semantic search and OCR on one device, with no account. Sync and the mobile apps are the paid part.