1. Install & launch
ReCopied lives in your menu bar. On first launch you'll see the ReCopied icon appear near the clock — that's your home base. Click it to open the clipboard popover; click it again to dismiss.
2. Grant paste permission (optional)
To let ReCopied paste directly into other apps, macOS needs Accessibility permission. The first time you use a Paste action, ReCopied offers to open System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility. Everything else works without any permission.
3. Clipboard history
Copy anything — text, rich text, links, images, files, even colors — and it appears at the top of your history. Click a clipping to select it, press ⌘C to copy it back, or press Space to preview.
- Search the whole history — it matches titles, text, URLs, and link page titles.
- Pause capture when you don't want history recorded; in-app actions still work.
- Smart clippings — colors get a swatch, JSON pretty-prints, timestamps show a date (step 6).
4. Clip Lists & Clip Queue
Clip Lists keep related clippings together and never trim. Create one from the list selector, then add clippings from their right-click menu or by dragging.
The Clip Queue lines up clippings and pastes them in order, one per shortcut. Add items from a clipping's right-click menu (Add to Clip Queue) or by dropping them in, then drag to reorder. Each row shows its position. Press Copy Next (⌃⌘C) to put the next item on the clipboard so you can paste it yourself, or turn on Paste Next (⌃⌘V) to paste it straight into the app you are using. It is great for filling a form field by field or working through a batch in order.
5. Formatters & merge
Formatters transform a clipping as you copy it — right-click and choose Copy with Formatter
to wrap it as Markdown, a quote, a code block, and more, using tokens like {text},
{title}, {url}. Select several clippings and choose Merge to
combine them into one.
Beyond Markdown, the built-in library includes case styles (snake, camel, kebab), base64, hex, and URL encode and decode, JSON formatting, and URL or email extraction. The extended formatters are opt-in, so you enable just the ones you want in Settings.
See the Formatters reference for the full list of tokens and modifiers.
6. Smart clippings & tools
ReCopied recognizes common content and adds the right preview and actions automatically:
- Colors (
#3B82F6,rgb(…),hsl(…), CSS names) show a swatch; right-click to Copy Color As → HEX / RGB / HSL. - JSON pretty-prints, with Copy Pretty / Copy Minified.
- Unix timestamps show a human date, with Copy Date As → ISO 8601 / Local Date.
Two tools live in the detail pane: QR Code — generate a QR from any clipping and copy or save it — and Copy Text from Image, on-device recognition (OCR) that pulls text out of a copied screenshot.
7. Capture rules
Rules run the moment something is copied. Each matches on the source app or a text pattern, then either routes the copy into a Clip List or the Clip Queue, or ignores it entirely. Every rule has an on/off switch, so you can park one and re-arm it later instead of deleting it. Build them in Settings › Rules.
8. Paste & plain text
Paste into the active app is optional and off by default. When you turn it on, ReCopied asks for Accessibility permission so it can paste a clipping straight into the app you were just using. You never need it: you can always copy with ⌘C and paste with ⌘V yourself. Plain Text Mode strips formatting so pasted text matches its destination — toggle it from the menu or a hotkey.
9. Privacy & sensitive data
Your history stays on your Mac — no account, no cloud sync. ReCopied automatically skips content that password managers flag as sensitive, so passwords and one-time codes never enter your history. As an extra guard, anything that looks like a payment card or API key is masked in previews; the value stays intact for when you actually need it.