ClipboardAI keeps what you copy and makes it easy to find and paste again on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Most people use history and search and miss the features that save the most time. Here are the five worth setting up, with the exact steps.
The features hidden in plain sight
1. The paste keyboard (iPhone and iPad)
The keyboard is the fastest way to paste on iPhone. Instead of switching apps to find what you copied, you pull up your clips inside any text field, and switching to it also saves what you just copied.
How to turn it on:
- Open Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards.
- Tap Add New Keyboard, then ClipboardAI.
- Tap ClipboardAI and turn on Allow Full Access, which a keyboard needs to read and paste your clips.
- To use it, tap the globe key while typing and choose ClipboardAI.
The row at the top of the keyboard is a filter: All, Images, Saved, your Collections, then categories such as Links, Email, Phone, Address and Codes. Tap any clip to paste it. Verification codes and passwords show as a padlock until you tap them.
Best use cases: filling out forms with repeated info (your address, email, company name), pasting code snippets into developer tools, and inserting reply templates into Mail or Spark.
2. Saved clips: your personal text shortcuts
Saving a clip does more than keep it near the top. Saved clips never roll off your history, however much you copy afterward, and they get their own Saved filter in the keyboard.
What deserves a save:
- Your email signature (all variants: short, full, with phone)
- Your home and work addresses
- Your company's standard support replies
- Your billing address for online checkout
- Recurring Slack messages or status updates
How to save: on iPhone, tap Save under the clip at the top of the home screen, or tap the bookmark icon on any clip in your history. To save something you have not copied yet, tap the plus button and choose Add Note. On a Mac, save a clip from the menu bar or All Clips and it moves to Saved in the sidebar. The free plan keeps 5 saved clips, and Pro makes it unlimited.
3. Paste several clips in order on Mac
This is the feature power users love most. Pick several clips, say five lines for a form, and ClipboardAI pastes them in order instead of one trip to the menu at a time.
How to do it:
- Press
⌘⇧Vto open the floating menu. - Hold
⌘and click each clip you want, in the order you want them to land. A number appears on each one. - Press Return, or click Paste All, and ClipboardAI pastes them one after another into the app you came from.
- When each clip goes into a different field, use Paste One by One instead, which pastes the next clip in the queue each time you press
⌘V.
Where this shines: multi-field web forms, moving data between apps, and updating CRM records with details copied from emails. The sequential paste guide covers all three modes.
4. Sync between your devices
With iCloud Sync on, which is part of Pro, what you save on iPhone shows up in ClipboardAI on your Mac and iPad, and the other way round. This is different from Apple's Universal Clipboard, which hands over only the single most recent copy, and only briefly.
ClipboardAI keeps your whole history in sync and searchable from any of your devices, and when two of them are on the same Wi-Fi it can hand clips across directly for near-instant sync.
Requirements:
- The same iCloud account on each device
- ClipboardAI installed with iCloud Sync turned on in its Settings on each device
- A ClipboardAI Pro plan
5. Search that finds it
ClipboardAI searches the full text of every clip, not just the first line, so a URL fragment, part of an email address, a snippet of code or a product SKU from weeks ago turns up. It also searches the text inside screenshots, and on an iPhone with Apple Intelligence you can ask for a clip in plain words.
Search tips:
- Use partial strings: searching "invoic" finds "invoice", "invoicing" and "Invoice_March_2026.pdf".
- Narrow by type with the category filters, such as Links, Email or Phone.
- Name the clips you reuse, like "Guest WiFi", so you can find them by name.
The Mac menu bar: your command center
On a Mac, ClipboardAI lives in the menu bar and records every copy automatically. One click opens your history, but the hotkey is faster: press ⌘⇧V in any app to open the floating menu and paste without touching the mouse.
Prefer a different combination? Open Settings from the menu bar, click the hotkey field and press the keys you want.
Privacy controls worth setting up
Keep apps out of your history (Mac): open Settings from the menu bar, go to the Privacy tab, and add apps under Ignored Apps, such as your password manager. ClipboardAI also skips anything a password manager marks as concealed or transient, which 1Password and KeePassXC set.
Auto-delete old clips: turn on Auto-Delete Old Clips in Settings and choose a window, so your history does not grow forever. Saved clips and anything in a Collection are kept.
Skip sync entirely: if you would rather not sync, leave iCloud Sync off and your history stays on that device. Either way, ClipboardAI sends nothing to its own servers.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far back does my clipboard history go?
On the free plan, your last 10 copies plus 5 saved clips. With Pro, your history stays until you delete it or auto-delete clears it, so clips from weeks or months ago are still there. Use search to jump straight to any of them.
What is the fastest way to paste an old clip?
On Mac, press ⌘⇧V, type a word from the clip or its name, and press Return. On iPhone, open the ClipboardAI keyboard and tap the clip. Most pastes take a couple of seconds.
Does naming a clip change what gets pasted?
No. The name is just a label that shows in your lists and menus. Pasting always drops in the clip's real content.
Is ClipboardAI on both iPhone and Mac?
Yes. With iCloud Sync on, your clips, saved items, and Collections stay in step across iPhone, iPad, and Mac through your own private iCloud.
