Last updated: September 2026
PastePlop is a desktop app that watches your Mac’s clipboard so you can paste things you copied earlier. It does not collect, transmit, or store any personal information about you on any server of ours. If you switch on iCloud sync, clips travel through your own private iCloud account so the free companion app for iPhone and iPad can show them — see iCloud sync below. Sync is off until you turn it on.
The system clipboard, while the app is running. Each time you copy something, PastePlop records it in a local history kept in ~/Library/Application Support/PastePlop/ on your Mac. With iCloud sync off — which is how PastePlop starts — nothing is sent anywhere and the contents stay on your machine.
Pause clipboard capture at any time from the menu-bar icon or the in-app menu, and clear the history with one click.
Screenshots and other copied images are run through Apple’s on-device Vision framework so the search field can find text that appears inside the image. The recognized text is stored alongside the image in the same local history. With iCloud sync off, the image and the OCR result never leave your Mac. With it on, they are among the things that can sync, and the recognized text can be excluded on its own.
Apart from iCloud sync, when it is on: when you copy a URL, PastePlop fetches that URL’s public Open Graph metadata (the page’s title and preview image) so the URL tile can show a rich preview instead of a bare address. The request goes directly from your Mac to the URL you copied. PastePlop does not route through any third-party server. No identifiers, no analytics, no “phone home.”
The direct-download version (from bendansby.com/apps/pasteplop) also checks for software updates by fetching a public appcast.xml file from this domain. The Mac App Store version uses Apple’s update mechanism instead and has no such request.
Off until you turn it on. PastePlop ships with sync disabled. Nothing about your clipboard reaches iCloud unless you enable it in Preferences ▸ Sync.
When it is on, PastePlop copies your most recent history (its newest 100 clips) and your saved categories (in full) into the private database of your own iCloud account, so the free PastePlop app for iPhone and iPad can display them. This uses Apple’s CloudKit. The data sits in your personal iCloud storage under your Apple Account — it is not sent to us, and we have no ability to read it. Apple’s handling of it is governed by Apple’s own privacy policy.
You choose what travels: text clips, images, and the text recognized inside images, each switchable separately. MiniPlop and pasteboard formatting never sync.
Sync is one-way. Your Mac writes; the phone and iPad only read. The clipboard of your iPhone or iPad is never captured or uploaded.
Switching sync off removes everything PastePlop has placed in iCloud, and “Remove from iCloud” in Preferences does the same without turning sync off.
None. PastePlop does not embed any third-party SDKs, analytics frameworks, advertising libraries, or trackers.
Accessibility. Required for the click-to-paste shortcut. macOS won’t let any app simulate the ⌘V keystroke into another app without it. PastePlop only uses Accessibility for that single keystroke; it does not read other apps’ UI.
PastePlop is a productivity utility. It is not directed at children, and it does not knowingly collect information from anyone, of any age.
If this policy ever changes, the “Last updated” date above will change with it. This page is the canonical source.
Questions? ben.dansby@gmail.com.