You Can Finally See Your Mac’s Clipboard History in Spotlight.
Surprisingly, your Mac only now has the ability to show you a full list of your copied items. macOS has always allowed you to copy and paste objects, but if you copied multiple items in a row, there was no way to view the oldest items added to the clipboard. While third-party apps have filled this gap for years, macOS itself hasn’t allowed you to easily view multiple items stored in the clipboard. With macOS 26 Tahoe, Spotlight search on your Mac gains support for clipboard history, meaning you can view virtually everything you’ve copied in the last 30 days. Here’s how to set up and use clipboard history on your Mac.
How to enable clipboard history on Mac
Clipboard history is disabled by default in macOS Tahoe, so you’ll need to enable it first. To do this, click the Apple logo in the upper-left corner of your Mac’s screen and select “System Preferences.” Now, go to Spotlight and scroll down the right pane. Enable “Clipboard Results” and click the drop-down menu below it. This will allow you to choose how long to retain clipboard history. Apple offers three options: 8 hours, 7 days, or 30 days. After this, you’ll be able to use clipboard history on your Mac.
If you frequently copy sensitive data to the clipboard, you might want to disable this feature. I know many people who somehow still store passwords, credit card information, and other banking data in WhatsApp chats or plain text files. As soon as you copy sensitive data from unprotected sources, it’s added to your clipboard history, which isn’t very convenient. The good news is that when you copy passwords from Apple Passwords or other password management apps, they won’t appear in your Mac’s clipboard history.
Access and use clipboard history on Mac
You can access your Mac’s clipboard history using Spotlight search in macOS Tahoe. First, copy a few items to the clipboard. These could be text, photos, or other files. Use the keyboard shortcut Command-Space (or click the magnifying glass icon in the upper-right corner of your Mac’s screen) to open Spotlight, then press Command-4 . This will open your Mac’s clipboard history, where you’ll see all recently copied files.
To see older items, scroll down the page. Next to each item, you’ll see a small “Copy” button that you can use to copy that item back to the clipboard. This is useful if you’ve copied several items in a row but forgot to paste the first ones. You can also select any item in the clipboard history list and press Enter on your keyboard to paste it into the foreground app.
To quickly clear your clipboard history, open Spotlight (Command-Space), then open the Clipboard History page (Command-4) and click the button with three dots on the right. Select “Clear History” to completely clear your clipboard. Or just wait—Apple will automatically delete all clipboard contents after a period of time you specify (from 8 hours to 30 days, depending on the value you choose in System Preferences).
Third-party clipboard management apps are better
I know some people don’t use Spotlight at all, preferring better alternatives like Raycast or Alfred . Fortunately, these apps also have built-in clipboard managers. Spotlight’s implementation is good enough for basic tasks, but it needs a faster way to access and paste from your clipboard history. While Spotlight’s clipboard history is a welcome upgrade, I still believe that if you’re serious about clipboard management, third-party alternatives are a better choice.
The best clipboard managers for Mac will let you sync your clipboard history across multiple devices, exclude specific apps from your clipboard history, filter clipboard items by type (links, text, images, etc.), copy multiple items and paste them sequentially (useful for filling out recurring forms), extract and copy text from images, and more.