A fast, private clipboard for your Mac and iPhone — no subscriptions, no AI gimmicks.
Status: 1.0.0 is the first public macOS release. Yank started as a clean‑slate evolution of Buffer (MIT, by Samir Patil). The macOS app ships as a signed, notarized release. The iOS app + keyboard/share extensions and private CloudKit sync are built and reach the App Store on their own review track.
- Fast & lightweight — small footprint, minimal RAM/CPU, zero third‑party dependencies.
- 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 anything; extracts searchable text from images/screenshots 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 clipboard history |
↑ / ↓ |
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 |
⎋ Esc |
Close history window |
Grab the notarized DMG from Releases, or use Homebrew:
brew install --cask The-PatientZero/tap/yankThe iPhone app ships separately on the App Store (manual submission, on its own review track).
See CHANGELOG.md for release history.
git clone https://github.com/The-PatientZero/yank.git
cd yank
brew install xcodegen # the Xcode project is generated from project.yml
xcodegen generate
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), Swift 6, and XcodeGen
(brew install xcodegen); 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.
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.