Clipboard AI is built to be driven from the keyboard. Once the shortcuts are in your fingers, you can pull up anything you have ever copied and paste it without reaching for the mouse. Here is the full set, grouped by what you are doing.
Press ⌘⇧V from any app to open Clipboard AI at your cursor. Everything else you can pick up as you go.
Open and close the picker
The picker appears right where your cursor is, over whatever app you are in. Press the same shortcut again, or hit Escape, to dismiss it. Clicking anywhere outside the picker closes it too.
| Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|
| ⌘⇧V | Open the picker at your cursor, in any app |
| ⌘⇧V again | Close the picker |
| esc | Close the picker |
Find and paste a clip
Just start typing to search your whole history. Use the arrow keys to move through the results and Return to paste, or jump straight to one of the top ten clips with a Command number.
| Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|
| type | Search your whole clipboard history as you type |
| ↑ ↓ | Move the selection up and down |
| return | Paste the selected clip into the app you came from |
| ⌘1 to ⌘9 | Paste the clip at that spot, first through ninth |
| ⌘0 | Paste the tenth clip |
Switch tabs
While you are browsing (before you start typing a search), the picker shows tabs for your categories and saved items. Cycle through them without leaving the keyboard.
| Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|
| ⌘] | Move to the next tab |
| ⌘[ | Move to the previous tab |
| tab ⇧tab | Also cycle through tabs while browsing |
Peek at an image
Clipboard AI keeps images in your history too. To check one before you paste it, select it and hold Space for a Quick Look style preview. Let go to hide it. This works while the search box is empty.
| Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|
| hold space | Preview the selected image, release to hide it |
Paste as plain text, or clean it up first
Right-click any text clip in the picker for a few extra options. Paste as Plain Text drops the text in with fonts, colours, and links stripped out. The same menu holds the text transforms, so you can change case, trim spaces, strip HTML, encode a URL, and more, then paste the tidied-up result.
Every clip in the picker has a right-click menu. It is the fastest way to paste without formatting or to run a quick text transform before you paste.
Make the hotkey your own
Prefer a different combination? You can change the shortcut that opens Clipboard AI. Open Settings from the menu bar, click the hotkey field, and press the keys you want. You can also set Clipboard AI to launch at login so it is always in your menu bar.
Full walkthrough: Customize the hotkey and menu on Mac. New to the Mac app? Start with Paste anywhere on Mac with the hotkey.
Press ⌘P to print this page, or bookmark it, so the cheat sheet is always a glance away.