Pace

Pace is a private, local-first clipboard and snippet manager for macOS. It lives in the menu bar, opens searchable clipboard history with Hyper+C and a permanent snippet library with Hyper+V, then pastes the selected item straight into the app you were using. Copied images are OCR'd locally so their text is searchable and pasteable, and everything is encrypted at rest. A companion pace CLI exposes clipboard history and snippets to scripts and agents.

Features

• Captures text, rich text, URLs, files, and images with their native pasteboard representations
• Promotes useful clipboard entries into permanent, searchable snippets
• Expands snippet keywords while you type, with configurable trigger behavior and per-app exclusions
• Renders contextual snippet variables for dates, times, clipboard entries, UUIDs, cursor placement, and nested snippets
• Keyboard-first panel: type to search, ⏎ pastes, ⌘⏎ copies, ⇧⏎ pastes as plain text, ⌘⇧⏎ trims whitespace and pastes as one line, ⌥⏎ pastes OCR text, ⌘1–⌘9 paste visible rows, ⌘⌫ deletes, and Esc closes
• Configurable global and panel shortcuts, plus a detail pane with content previews and source metadata
• Automatic local OCR through Vision; recognized text participates in search
• Explicit OCR-text paste and copy actions for images; recognized terminals receive original image pastes through Ctrl+V for tools that support clipboard images, such as Claude Code
• AES-GCM encrypted item files and search catalog; the vault key lives in the login keychain
• Sensitive pasteboard markers and recognizable credential formats are never stored
• Configurable retention limits by age, item count, and storage size
• Pause capture for a fixed interval or until resumed
• Same-user CLI access over a private Unix socket; no token system
• Import your existing Alfred clipboard history with one script

Download

Signed and notarized builds are published on the GitHub Releases page.

Why

I wanted a fast, minimal clipboard history that keeps everything on my Mac — no cloud sync, no account, no subscription — and that my scripts and coding agents can read and write through a real CLI instead of UI automation.

Using Pace

1. Launch Pace and grant Accessibility permission when prompted (required to paste directly into other apps).
2. Copy things. Pace captures them in the background.
3. Press Hyper+C (⌃⌥⇧⌘C) to open clipboard history over your current app, search or arrow to an item, and press ⏎ to paste it into the app you came from.

Double-clicking a row pastes it; right-clicking offers paste variants, copy, and pin. Use ↑ and ↓ to move through history, ⌘↑ and ⌘↓ to jump to either end, and ⌘1–⌘9 to paste the rows currently aligned with those numbers. Press ⌘S on a clipboard item to turn it into a snippet and open its configuration in the snippet library. The global hotkeys and the paste, plain-text, single-line, OCR, copy, save-as-snippet, and delete shortcuts are configurable in Settings (⌘,). Settings also includes launch-at-login, retention controls, and the CLI installer.

Snippets

Press Hyper+V (⌃⌥⇧⌘V) to open the snippet library. Create a snippet from scratch or promote a clipboard item, then give it an optional keyword such as ;em. With expansion enabled, typing that keyword in another app replaces it with the rendered snippet. Settings controls immediate or delimiter-triggered expansion, clipboard restoration, compatibility delay, and excluded apps.

Templates support contextual variables. The editor's Insert Variable menu shows a live example beside each value.

{date}                         current date
{time}                         current time
{datetime}                     current date and time
{datetime format=iso8601}      ISO 8601 with the local UTC offset
{clipboard}                    latest clipboard text
{clipboard offset=1}           previous clipboard text
{cursor}                       final cursor position
{uuid}                         a new UUID
{snippet name="Email"}         another snippet by name

Date variables also accept custom DateFormatter patterns, locales, and offsets such as {date format="yyyy-MM-dd" offset="+1d"}. Append modifiers with pipes, for example {clipboard|trim|single-line} or {snippet name="Email"|uppercase}. Literal braces can be escaped as {{ and }}.

The pace CLI

In the General settings tab, click Install beside Command Line Tool to link the bundled CLI at ~/.local/bin/pace. Run pace help for the complete command reference.

pace status
pace show                      # open the history panel
pace list --limit 20
pace search 'invoice type:image app:Preview has:ocr'
pace add 'generated by a script' --source 'Build agent' --source-kind agent
pace copy ITEM_ID
pace paste ITEM_ID --ocr-text
pace get ITEM_ID --ocr-text
pace get ITEM_ID --output exported-item
pace pin ITEM_ID
pace delete ITEM_ID

pace show --mode snippets
pace snippets list
pace snippets search email
pace snippets get ';em'
pace snippets add 'Email' 'person@example.com' --keyword ';em'
pace snippets update ';em' --template 'new@example.com'
pace snippets render ';em'
pace snippets validate '{datetime format=iso8601}'
pace snippets copy ';em'
pace snippets paste ';em'
pace snippets promote CLIPBOARD_ITEM_ID --name 'Email' --keyword ';em' --expand

pace retention show
pace retention preview
pace retention set --days 30 --max-items 10000 --max-storage 1GB --prune

The CLI launches the menu-bar service when needed, and the vault unlocks automatically. Search supports type:, app:, is:pinned, and has:ocr filters. Clipboard and snippet commands can return JSON. Snippets can be addressed by full or unique-prefix UUID, exact keyword, or case-insensitive name. Snippet templates may be positional, piped on stdin, or read with --template/--file; render and validate resolve contextual variables using the same live clipboard and snippet catalog as the app. pace add accepts text, piped input, or a file, plus --timestamp, --source-kind, and --session metadata so imports and agent workflows can preserve context.

Importing from Alfred

scripts/import-alfred.sh

Imports Alfred's clipboard history — text and images, with original timestamps and source apps. Entries pass through the normal capture path, so the sensitive-content filter applies and duplicates merge. Raycast's history is encrypted and cannot be imported.

Requirements

• macOS 13 or later
• Xcode 16 or later (command-line tools) to build from source
• mise for the pinned XcodeGen tool

Build

The Xcode project is generated from project.yml; *.xcodeproj is not committed.

1. Clone the repository.
2. Copy Configuration/Local.xcconfig.example to Configuration/Local.xcconfig.
3. Set DEVELOPMENT_TEAM to your Apple Developer Team ID and choose a unique PRODUCT_BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER.
4. Generate and build:

mise trust
mise install
mise exec -- xcodegen generate
open Pace.xcodeproj    # or build from the command line:

xcodebuild \
  -project Pace.xcodeproj \
  -scheme Pace \
  -destination 'platform=macOS' \
  CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO \
  build

xcodebuild \
  -project Pace.xcodeproj \
  -scheme Pace \
  -destination 'platform=macOS' \
  CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO \
  test

The app build embeds the CLI at Pace.app/Contents/Helpers/pace.

The app icon and menu bar icon are drawn programmatically. After editing scripts/generate-icons.swift, regenerate the PNGs in the asset catalog with:

swift scripts/generate-icons.swift

Publishing a release

The release script reads the version, build number, bundle ID, and signing team from the resolved Pace app target. Signing details come from the release environment or the ignored Configuration/Local.xcconfig; no Apple credentials are stored in the repository. The workflow follows Reco.

Copy the release environment template, fill in your Apple credentials and GitHub repository, then trust the mise configuration once:

cp .env.example .env
$EDITOR .env
mise trust

mise exec -- loads the ignored .env and redacts its values from mise output. The file uses APPLE_ID, APPLE_ID_PASSWORD, TEAM_ID, and optionally DEVELOPER_ID_APPLICATION. On the first release, the script validates those values and stores the app-specific password in the PaceNotary Keychain profile. Later releases reuse that profile. NOTARY_PROFILE defaults to PaceNotary; the older NOTARY_APPLE_ID, DEVELOPER_IDENTITY, and DEVELOPMENT_TEAM names remain supported. You can also create the profile explicitly:

mise exec -- scripts/publish-release.sh --setup-notary-profile PaceNotary

Before a release, update MARKETING_VERSION and CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION in project.yml, regenerate the project, then commit and push those changes. Run:

mise exec -- scripts/publish-release.sh --dry-run    # inspect the release plan
mise exec -- scripts/publish-release.sh --publish    # build, notarize, and publish

The publish command requires a clean branch synchronized with its upstream. It creates a universal archive, signs the app and embedded CLI with Developer ID, submits the app directly with the configured notarytool profile, staples and verifies it, creates ZIP and DMG artifacts, separately notarizes and staples the outer DMG, verifies SHA-256 checksums, and uploads all three artifacts to a GitHub Release. It then replaces /Applications/Pace.app with the verified app and launches it. This flow does not require an Apple account to be logged into Xcode.

Use --skip-install to leave the installed app untouched. Passing an existing notarized .app path skips the archive and app-notarization stages. --skip-dmg-notarization is an explicit exception for private testing and is not recommended for public releases.

Privacy and permissions

Everything stays on your Mac. History items and the search catalog are encrypted with AES-GCM; the key is held in your login keychain, dropped from memory while the Mac sleeps or the session locks, and reloaded automatically. Pasteboard types that mark transient or secret content, and text matching recognizable credential formats, are never stored. Debug builds keep a separate key and database under Pace's Debug support directory.

Pace is not sandboxed because it reads the general pasteboard and synthesizes paste keystrokes; macOS Accessibility consent provides the user control for that event posting. The CLI talks to the app over a mode-0600 Unix socket in your home directory, so only your user can reach it. Pace makes no network connections.

AI disclosure

I made Pace using coding agent tools and LLMs.

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE.