Practical guides to the Mac clipboard.
Learn how copying and pasting works on macOS, what the built-in tools can do and when a clipboard manager is useful.
How to see clipboard history on a Mac
macOS Tahoe has Clipboard History in Spotlight. Learn how to open it, find a recent copy and decide when a dedicated, private manager is useful.
How to copy text from your screen or a screenshot on a Mac
How to copy text from a screenshot or any region of your Mac screen, including tables: Live Text, built-in capture, and on-device OCR.
How to copy a table out of a PDF without it turning to mush
PDFs store text at coordinates instead of keeping table structure. Learn why copied columns collapse and how to recover rows as CSV, Markdown or LaTeX.
How to pick a colour from anywhere on your Mac screen
Compare Digital Colour Meter, the system colour panel and a keyboard-driven picker, including how to get a hex value from macOS.
Every Mac copy and paste shortcut worth knowing
The full set: copy, cut, paste, paste and match style, copy and paste style, screenshots straight to the clipboard, and pbcopy in Terminal.
Is your Mac clipboard private?
What any app can read from your clipboard, what macOS 26 changed, why password managers mark their clips, and what to ask of a clipboard manager before installing one.