HoldStack
Your clipboard history, always within reach.
Your clipboard history, always within reach.
Features
Every time you copy something — text, rich text, images, PDFs, audio files, video files, file paths, or web URLs — HoldStack captures it instantly and adds it to your history. Image files, PDFs, RTFD documents, and audio files are copied into the app's own storage at capture time, so clips remain valid even after the original file is moved or deleted — the original filename is shown on the card. Video files stay linked to their original location instead, so they only work on the Mac where the file lives. Web URLs get an og:image thumbnail fetched automatically; audio clips get a waveform thumbnail and video clips get a frame thumbnail.
The clip panel slides in from whichever screen edge you choose: left, right, top, or bottom. Hover near the edge to reveal it; move away to dismiss it. Lock it open when you need it to stay.
Organise your clips into named stacks. Pin important stacks so their items never auto-expire, switch between them with a single click, and move or copy any clip to another stack via the context menu. Designate one stack as the live stack in Settings so every clipboard capture and "Copy to HoldStack" action lands there automatically — no matter which stack you're currently viewing.
Optionally sync your stacks and clips across every Mac signed in to the same iCloud account. Enable it in Settings → iCloud Sync — changes appear on your other Macs within moments, using your own private CloudKit database (never visible to the developer or anyone else). Files dragged in from Finder and video clips stay local to the Mac they were added on, since a file path on one Mac isn't valid on another — audio clips do sync, since their data is copied into HoldStack's own storage. Duplicate clips caused by Apple's own Universal Clipboard are automatically deduplicated.
A user-definable global shortcut shows or hides the panel from any app — no mouse needed. Configure it in Settings → Shortcuts.
While the panel is visible, press 1–9 or 0 to instantly paste one of the first ten visible clips into the frontmost app. Each clip card shows its digit badge so you always know which key to press. The numbers follow the scroll position — "1" is always the first clip you can see. Web URL clips open in the browser instead of pasting.
The panel takes focus the moment it appears — no click required. Arrow keys walk through your clips (Left/Right for horizontal panels, Up/Down for vertical). Return pastes or opens the selected clip. Space opens a full preview. Backspace deletes. ⌘Z undoes. ⌘F opens search. Escape dismisses the panel.
Drag content from any app — text, images, files, audio, video, URLs — and drop it onto the panel to capture it instantly, including videos from apps like Photos that hand over a file “promise” instead of a direct file path. Drag a clip out of the panel and drop it into any other app: an image into Mail, a file path into Terminal, a URL into a browser. Drag within the panel to reorder your clips.
Press ⌘F or tap the magnifier icon to instantly filter your clips by text content, URL, filename, or web page title. Results update as you type. Press Escape to return to the full list.
Press Space while hovering a clip (or after selecting it with the arrow keys) to open a full-size preview. Press Space again to close it. Works for text, rich text, images, PDFs, audio, video, and web URLs — even while another app is in front. Audio and video clips get full playback controls (play/pause, scrubber, elapsed/remaining time) right in the preview.
Web URL clips remember which browser you came from. The action button and the modifier+number shortcut open the URL directly in that browser, so you can jump straight back to any page you previously had open.
Create a full backup of all your stacks and clips from the menu bar icon. Restore from a backup at any time — everything comes back instantly, no restart needed.
All clipboard data is stored only on your device and is never transmitted to external servers. HoldStack automatically skips copies from password managers — passwords are never captured. HoldStack is notarized by Apple, so macOS can verify it is safe before it ever runs.
Requirements
