Clipnest is a clipboard manager with a searchable history that syncs across Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android over your own Wi-Fi. No cloud account. Encrypted end to end. It knows what a secret looks like, and it costs $14.99 once for five devices.
Passwords, card numbers, one time codes, API keys and private keys are recognised the instant
they are copied, kept out of the search index, and shown only as a typed preview like
CARD: 4111••••. Apps you exclude, your password manager for example, are never
captured at all. Lock the app behind Touch ID on your Mac. And on every device the
whole database is encrypted at rest with SQLCipher: the key lives in the
Keychain (or your phone's secure storage), bound to that device and impossible to export.
Scan a code on the new device, match the six digits that appear on both, done. From then on your Mac, your Windows PC, your iPhone and your Android phone share the same history, talking to each other directly over your Wi-Fi. There is no bucket to configure, no beta program to join and no APK to sideload.
Images sync too, not just text. From your iPhone you can share into your history straight from any app's share sheet, without opening Clipnest first. Pin something on Windows and it is pinned on the Mac. Delete something, or let Auto-delete history age it out, and it disappears from every paired device. A device that was offline catches up the moment it reconnects. Today both devices need to be on the same network; sync across the internet comes later.
A Spotlight-style panel drops down over whatever you're doing. Full-text FTS5 search races through everything you've ever copied as you type, ranked by how recently and often you use it. Arrow keys to move, ↵ to paste. Your hands never leave the keyboard. On Windows the same list lives in the tray behind your own hotkey.
Clipnest quietly captures everything you copy: plain and rich text, screenshots and images (read with on-device Vision OCR on the Mac so you can search the words inside them), and actual files as a soft copy you can paste straight back into Finder. Auto-sorted into link, code, email, text, image and file categories. On Android you can capture from the Share sheet or the "select text, then Clipnest" action, with no accessibility service and no background service running.
Promote any clip to a reusable snippet and drop it into a folder: email signatures, boilerplate replies, that one shell command you always forget. Snippets are independent copies, so they never expire with your rolling history. Recall them from the same search panel.
Choose any item and Clipnest re-focuses the app you were just in and fires ⌘V for you, no manual switching. Need it clean? ⌘↵ pastes as plain text and strips the formatting. Pin what matters, soft-delete the rest and pull it back from Recently deleted. And Auto-delete history clears the old stuff on a schedule you pick (never, 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 30 days, 2 months or 3 months); what it deletes disappears on every paired device, while pinned and filed clips are always kept.
No account, no setup. Install, copy something, search.
Clipnest lives in your menu bar on the Mac and your tray on Windows. No Dock icon, no clutter. It starts capturing what you copy right away.
One optional macOS permission lets Clipnest paste straight back into your apps. Skip it and it still copies for you.
Press ⌃⌥V, type a few letters, hit ↵. That's it.
Scan the code, match the six digits, done. Up to five devices share one history over your own Wi-Fi.
Cross-device sync is table stakes now. Clipnest is the one that also guards your secrets, reads your screenshots, keeps your snippets, and costs $14.99 once for five devices.
| Feature | Paste | Octoclip | UniClipboard | Clipnest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mac + Windows + iPhone + Android | Apple only | ✓ | ✓ (+Linux) | ✓ |
| Sync with no cloud account | ✕ (iCloud) | nearby ✓; cloud needs your own S3/WebDAV | ✓ | ✓ |
| End to end encrypted, no server in the middle | ✕ | nearby only | ✓ | ✓ |
| Whole history encrypted at rest, device-bound key | ✕ | not documented | ✓ | ✓ |
| Secrets masked and kept out of search | ✕ | not documented | not documented | ✓ |
| Never captures from apps you exclude | ✓ | not documented | not documented | ✓ |
| OCR search inside screenshots | ✕ | not documented | not documented | ✓ |
| Snippets & folders | ✓ | ✓ (aliases, collections) | not documented | ✓ |
| Auto-paste into the app you left, plain-text paste | ✓ | not documented | not documented | ✓ |
| Auto-delete history on every device | ✓ | not documented | not documented | ✓ |
| Sync across the internet | ✓ (iCloud) | via your own bucket | ✓ | later |
| Price for 5 devices | $29.99 / yr | $39.99 once | free (open source) | $14.99 once |
| Free tier | trial | 1 nearby device, recent clips | everything | 20 items |
Based on each product's published documentation, August 2026. "Not documented" means we could not find the feature described; tell us if we missed it.
No subscription, no account. Start free, unlock one device for the price of a coffee, or sync five of them for half of what one year of the competition costs.
Cloud Sync for devices on different networks comes later as an optional subscription.
Everything you might want to know before you download.
macOS 13 (Ventura) and later on both Apple Silicon and Intel, Windows as a tray app with a hotkey, paste-back and OCR, plus iPhone and Android. Every device you pair shares the same clipboard history.
Only to the devices you paired yourself, and only directly over your local network. The transfer
is encrypted end to end. There is no server in the middle and no account to create, so nothing
is ever uploaded to us. On every device the history itself sits in a database encrypted at rest
with SQLCipher.
Scan a QR code on the new device, or paste the link or type the address if you'd rather. Both devices then show the same six digit code and both of you confirm it. After that they talk to each other directly over Wi-Fi. Up to 5 devices, any member can add the next one, and a device that was offline catches up when it reconnects. Today both devices need to be on the same network; sync across the internet comes later.
No. Pairing only completes when the same six digit code is shown on both devices and confirmed on both. Being on the network is not enough. If you remove a device, it cannot rejoin without pairing again from scratch.
When you copy something that looks like a password, credit card, one time code, API key or
private key, Clipnest detects it on the spot, keeps it out of the search index, and shows only
a typed preview like CARD: 4111••••. You can still paste it, it is just never
displayed or searchable in full. It's configurable per category, and apps you exclude (your
password manager, for instance) are never captured at all.
Only so it can paste for you: after you pick a clip, Clipnest re-focuses the app you were in and
presses ⌘V. If you'd rather not grant it, Clipnest simply copies the item to your
clipboard and you paste it yourself. Nothing is ever recorded.
Yes. Text, links, code, email addresses and images all sync to your paired devices. Files are a Mac feature and stay on the Mac they were copied on, they are not sent to your other devices.
Free for your first 20 items on one device, with every feature unlocked. Local is $2 paid once, per platform, for unlimited history on that device. Sync is $14.99 paid once for up to 5 devices over your local network. Cloud Sync for devices on different networks comes later as an optional subscription.
Universal Clipboard only works between Apple devices and only carries the last thing you copied. There is no history, no search, and nothing at all for Windows or Android. Clipnest keeps a searchable history and syncs it to every device you paired, whichever platform it runs. See the guides on iPhone and Windows and Android and Mac.
No. Octoclip's published documentation says its cloud sync runs through a WebDAV or S3 bucket you supply and protect with a master password. Clipnest has no bucket to configure: paired devices talk to each other directly over your network.
Search everything you've ever copied, keep your secrets masked, and paste it back on whichever device you happen to be holding.