A fast, private clipboard for your Mac and iPhone — no subscriptions, no AI gimmicks.
Status: Yank is publicly available for macOS, iPhone, and iPad. Yank started as a clean-slate evolution of Buffer (MIT, by Samir Patil). The Mac ships as a signed, notarized app; the iOS app and its read-only keyboard and Share extensions ship through the App Store.
- Fast & lightweight — small footprint, minimal RAM/CPU, zero third-party runtime libraries.
- Private by design — your history stays yours. The local clipboard is on‑device; optional cross‑device sync uses your own iCloud (CloudKit private database), never our servers, and known password managers are excluded by default while secret‑marked pasteboard copies are skipped.
- Free & open source — everything is free, including cross‑device sync (Mac ↔ iPhone). No purchase, no subscription, no account to create. If Yank saves you time, consider sponsoring development.
- Text + Images + OCR — captures plain text, links, rich text, images, and screenshots; extracts searchable text from images on-device with Apple Vision.
- Purposeful, on-device intelligence — optional Apple Intelligence (macOS 26+): tag suggestions, Smart Paste rewrites, and natural-language search. On-device via Foundation Models, opt-in, no cloud, no account — intelligence stays purposeful, never a gimmick.
- Organized — pins, bookmarks, and color‑coded tags with
#filtering. - Multi‑select & multi‑paste — select several items and paste them together.
- Large‑content friendly — chunked previews and disk‑backed storage for multi‑MB text.
- Native feel — SwiftUI + AppKit menu‑bar app; quick access with ⇧⌘V.
Read the Privacy Policy for a complete description of local storage, optional iCloud sync, extensions, on-device intelligence, permissions, and deletion controls. For help or to report a problem, see Yank Support.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
⇧⌘V |
Open the Quick Picker (Settings → General → "Shortcut opens" can open Full history instead) |
↑ / ↓ |
Navigate items |
⇧↑ / ⇧↓ |
Expand selection (multi‑select) |
↵ Enter |
Paste selected item |
⌘C |
Copy selected item to clipboard |
⌘P |
Pin / unpin selected item |
⌘B |
Bookmark / unbookmark selected item |
⌘T |
Add tag to selected item |
⌘S |
Save image to disk (image items) |
⌘⌫ |
Delete selected item |
⌘, |
Open Settings from the history window |
⌥⌘1–⌥⌘5 |
Switch layout: List, Grid, Masonry, Gallery, Split |
⎋ Esc |
Clear the search text; press again to close the history window |
⌘Z |
Undo a delete within 10 seconds (otherwise undoes typing in the search field) |
⌘F |
Focus the search field |
⌘1–⌘9 |
Paste the first nine clips directly |
⌥↵ |
Paste as text |
Space |
Peek at the selected clip (when the search field is empty) |
Tab |
Complete a tag (in the tag field or a #tag search) |
← / → |
Move between tiles in Grid, Masonry and Gallery |
⌫ |
In an empty search field, remove the active tag filter |
Except for the first row, these keys work in the Full history window. The Quick Picker has its own keys.
The Quick Picker is the compact chooser the shortcut opens. Its footer lists the main keys.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
↑ / ↓ |
Move the selection |
↵ Enter |
Paste the selected clip |
⌥↵ |
Paste the selected clip as text (the text of a text clip, or the text recognized in an image) |
⌘↵ |
Copy the selected clip without pasting; a "Copied." note confirms it |
⌘1–⌘9 |
Paste the first nine clips directly |
⌘F |
Focus the search field |
⌘O |
Open Full history |
⎋ Esc |
Close the picker |
Right-click a clip for Paste, Copy, Pin to top (or Unpin) and, where available, Smart Paste.
A Paste Sequence collects text as you copy it and pastes it back one item at a time. Start one with
the "Paste Sequence" button in the Quick Picker or "Start Paste Sequence" in the menu-bar menu.
While it runs, the shortcut (⇧⌘V by default) pastes the next item instead of opening the picker,
and a small panel at the top of the screen shows the status. To cancel, click "Cancel" on that
panel, choose "Cancel Paste Sequence" in the menu-bar menu (right-click or Control-click the icon),
or let it expire after 10 minutes without activity. Cancelling leaves your clipboard and history as
they are. Paste Sequence needs Accessibility access to send the paste.
Grab the notarized DMG from Releases, or use Homebrew:
brew install --cask The-PatientZero/tap/yankTo check that a download was built from this repository, run
gh attestation verify Yank.dmg --repo The-PatientZero/yank.
The iPhone and iPad app is available on the
App Store. On iOS, you choose whether Yank may
check the latest eligible clipboard text or image while the app is in the foreground.
Share and Save Clipboard remain explicit capture paths in either mode. The keyboard only
reads a bounded view of clips already saved by the app; it never captures the current clipboard.
See CHANGELOG.md for release history.
git clone https://github.com/The-PatientZero/yank.git
cd yank
XCODEGEN_BIN="$(scripts/install_xcodegen.sh)"
"$XCODEGEN_BIN" generate # project.yml is the source of truth
open Yank.xcodeproj
# Build & run: ⌘R (set your own Development Team in Signing & Capabilities)Requirements: macOS 14+ to run, Xcode 26+ to build (the UI adopts Liquid Glass with runtime fallbacks below macOS 26), and Swift 6. The repository installer builds and checksum-verifies the pinned XcodeGen release; the iOS app targets iOS 17+. An unsigned source build runs local-only: CloudKit sync needs the iCloud container entitlement, which only the signed builds (notarized DMG on Mac, App Store on iPhone) carry.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for the complete unsigned package, generated-project,
macOS, iOS simulator, privacy-manifest, and public-link gate matrix.
Yank is based on Buffer by Samir Patil — an
open‑source (MIT) clipboard manager for macOS. Sincere thanks to Samir and the upstream
contributors whose work this builds on. See NOTICE for full attribution.
Released under the MIT License — see LICENSE. This is a derivative work: the
original copyright notice is retained alongside the current maintainer's, as required by the MIT
License. See NOTICE for the complete attribution and credits.