Clipboard History You Can Search, Tag, and Keep Private
Snipset keeps a clipboard history you can search, filter by tag, and paste from one shortcut, while it skips passwords and secrets. Here is how it works.
Your operating system's clipboard holds one thing at a time. Copy a second link and the first is gone. Snipset keeps a clipboard history instead: every text, link, code block, and image you copy lands in a list you can search, filter by tag, and paste back with one shortcut. This tutorial covers capture, search, pasting, and how Snipset keeps secrets out of the list.
Everything here runs in the Snipset desktop app on Windows, Linux, and macOS (beta). The Android app keeps its own clipboard list, and we point out where it behaves differently.
How Snipset Captures Your Clipboard History
Clipboard history is on by default. You can switch it off under Settings, in the feature modules list (Clipboard history), or with the toggle at the top of the Clipboard History page. While it is off, Snipset does not watch the clipboard at all.
How Snipset notices a new copy depends on the system:
- Windows: Snipset registers a clipboard listener, so Windows tells it the moment the clipboard changes.
- Linux and macOS: Snipset checks the clipboard every 500 milliseconds and only saves content that changed since the last check.
Text is saved with a type (text, code, link, or rich text), and images are saved as PNG files inside the history, on all three desktop systems. Copying the same thing twice does not create a duplicate: the existing entry moves back to the top.
Search Your Clipboard History
Open the Clipboard History page and type in Search clipboard history.... Snipset runs the query against a full-text index of your history and falls back to a plain substring match when the query has nothing the index can use.
Click the filter button to narrow the list further. The filter panel offers:
- Media Type: Text, Code, Link, Image, Rich Text, or File
- Source App: the app you copied from (Windows and macOS only)
- Time Range and Sort By
- Tag: any tag already attached to an entry
Favorites Stay on Top
Star an entry to make it a favorite. Favorites stay above everything else when the list is sorted newest first, which is the default, so the email signature, shipping note, or code snippet you paste every day is always one glance away.
Tags for Grouping Entries
Tags group entries across time, for example work, invoice, or client-a. In the current desktop app you filter by tag on the Clipboard History page, and you add, remove, or recolor tags with the Snipset command line tool:
snipset clipboard tag add 1234 invoice
snipset clipboard tag set-color invoice "#f8a232"
snipset clipboard tag list
The snipset command line tool is bundled with the desktop app on Windows, Linux, and the macOS beta. On Windows, the installer adds it to your PATH, so it works in any new terminal.
AI assistants connected to Snipset through MCP can do the same with the snipset_set_clipboard_tag tool, so you can ask your assistant to tag the last few items for you.
Paste from History with One Shortcut
You do not need to open the main window to reuse an item. Press Ctrl+Shift+K (the default; you can change it under global shortcuts in Settings) to open the Clipboard Magic Menu, a small popup with your recent history.
- Start typing to search.
- Use the arrow keys to pick an entry.
- Press Enter to insert it into the app you were working in, or Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on macOS) to copy it and close the menu.
Need to paste several items in order, such as a name, then an email, then an address? Press Ctrl+Q in the menu to switch to multi-select, mark entries with Space, and press Enter to start a paste queue. Then Ctrl+Alt+V pastes the next item each time you press it.
Keep Private Things Out of Your Clipboard History
Snipset uses several layers to keep secrets out of the history. They are heuristics, not a guarantee: a bare password with no label, copied from an app that is not on the skip list, can still be saved.
Sensitive Text Is Skipped
Before saving any copied text, Snipset checks it against patterns for passwords (password: ...), API keys and tokens, credit card numbers and any long digit run, private keys, JWTs, Indonesian phone numbers, emails in a login or reset context, and labelled personal details such as national ID, bank account, card, address and OTP values. It also flags random-looking strings of 32 to 128 characters that look like generated secrets. Text that matches is not saved, and the log records only that something was rejected, never the content. This applies on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
On Android, the behavior differs: a copied value that looks sensitive is stored as a masked preview rather than skipped.
Password Managers and Private Windows
On Windows and macOS, Snipset knows which app you copied from, and it ignores copies from Bitwarden, KeePassXC, 1Password, LastPass, Dashlane, and Enpass. It also ignores copies from a Chrome Incognito window or a Microsoft Edge InPrivate window. On macOS, it additionally skips anything an app marks as concealed or transient on the pasteboard, which is how most password managers flag a copied password. Linux does not tell Snipset the source app, so on Linux the pattern check above is the filter that applies.
Blur for Screen Sharing
If you share your screen, turn on Blur Sensitive Content under Settings, Clipboard History. You can blur a single entry with Toggle Blur on its card, or use Blur All Items to blur everything at once. Blur hides the text on screen; the entry itself stays in your history.
Retention, Clearing, and Where Your Data Lives
By default Snipset keeps clipboard items for 7 days. Change it with Auto-deletion Interval under Settings, Clipboard History: anywhere from 1 day to 1 year. Older items are removed each time a new item is captured and whenever you change the setting. The interval applies to favorites too, so export anything you want to keep longer.
To start over, click Clear All on the Clipboard History page and confirm. This deletes every entry, favorites included.
Your history lives in a local SQLite database, snipset.db, in the Snipset folder of your user data directory. Snipset does not encrypt that file, so anything that can read your user folder can read your history. Matched secrets are filtered before saving, so they never reach it. Full-disk encryption of your operating system is what protects it at rest.
Export Your History
Click Export All on the Clipboard History page to save everything as a text file. Images go into a folder next to it, as PNG files. If you prefer structured data, snipset clipboard export --out history.json writes the history as JSON from the command line.
Try Your Own Clipboard History
Copy a few things, press Ctrl+Shift+K, and type a word from one of them. That is the whole habit: copy freely, find it later, and let Snipset filter out what it can recognize as a secret. See Snipset plans and pricing →