PocketrySee it in action.
Drag a box over any text on screen and it lands on your clipboard. Right-click an entry to add a date to Calendar or paste it as UPPERCASE, a URL slug, quoted reply and more.
Everything Pocketry does.
Press ⌃⌥V from any app, type to search, hit Return to paste. No window to manage.
Everyday use
Screenshot to text
Press ⌃⌥T and drag over anything on screen, even a video or a PDF you can’t select. The text is read on your Mac and copied. You hear the usual screenshot sound, then see “Reading…” in the menu bar. No shortcut to remember: use the button at the top of the window, or right-click the menu bar icon and choose Screenshot to Text.
Search that finds the right copy
Typos are forgiven, “invoices” finds “invoice”, and the best matches come first. Type plain English like “links from Safari last week” or “pinned code” and it filters for you. Ask your clipboard looks through up to 1,000 entries, not just the latest few.
Find it by what it means
Type what you remember, like “the plumber’s number” or “how much does it cost”, and Pocketry finds it even when you don’t remember the words. A small search model built into the app does this on your Mac, with no network connection. It works best in English, it won’t find everything, and you can switch it off in Settings.
Find pictures by what they say and show
Pictures in your history are read on your Mac, so search finds them too. Search “Denver” and the screenshot of the booking comes up, or “zebra” for a photo of one, with the matching line or label shown in the row. “Screenshots from yesterday” lists screenshots, not photos. Right-click a picture to copy all of its text, or to find similar pictures, such as other screenshots of the same page. The text is kept with your encrypted history, and text that looks like a password or key is never kept. Turn it off in Settings › Pasting, which also forgets what was read.
Find similar
Right-click an entry and choose “Find similar entries” to see the others that mean about the same, best matches first. It uses the notes search already keeps on your Mac, never lists secrets, and needs Find by meaning to be on. For a picture, choose “Find similar pictures” to see the ones that look like it.
Paste as…
Paste as UPPERCASE, camelCase, a quoted reply, a Markdown link, escaped JSON, sorted lines, or a link with the tracking removed. Copied a table? Right-click the entry: it turns spreadsheet cells, CSV, a Markdown table or HTML table source into any of the others: CSV, a Markdown table or an HTML table. Or paste plain text when you copied something fancy.
Typed on the wrong keyboard?
If text came out as “ςασ τυπινγ” instead of “was typing”, right-click the entry and choose Paste as the other language. It only appears for Greek, Russian and Hebrew keyboards you have switched on, and it is best effort: for example, Greek’s final sigma always becomes “w”.
Paste item 3 from any app
The ⌘1 to ⌘9 numbers in the Pocketry window work while it is open. To paste by number from any app, turn on Quick paste in Settings, General, then press ⌃⌥1 for item 1, ⌃⌥2 for item 2, and so on. You can pick a different pair of modifier keys in the same place. It is off until you turn it on, and it needs Accessibility permission, which lets Pocketry send the paste for you.
Paste several things in order
Right-click the menu bar icon and choose Start Paste Stack. Copy what you need, in the order you want it, and a count appears by the icon. You can also click entries in the Pocketry window to add them. Click where the pasting should start and press ⌃⌥B (you can change it in Settings). Each press pastes the next one, starting with the oldest. Stop it from the same menu. Secrets, pictures and files are never queued. It needs Accessibility permission; without it, each item is copied and you press ⌘V.
Shortcuts and tips, in the app
Click the ? button in the Pocketry window, press ⌘/ or choose Shortcuts & Tips from the menu bar icon’s right-click menu. The page lists the main shortcuts as you have set them, says whether Quick paste and the paste stack are on, and lets you switch them on right there. Type a word like “stack” or “screenshot” in the search box and a short card shows how to use it. Turn those suggestions off with the ✕ on the card, or back on in Settings under General.
Text, images and files
Keeps all three, with thumbnails and a Space-bar preview. Drag entries into other apps, or share them. Pull the text out of any image with built-in OCR.
Pins and collections
Pin what you reuse and file it into collections like Work or Replies. Add a note to any entry, or have it delete itself in an hour. Tick several entries and the ⋯ menu next to Combine pins them, adds them to a collection, saves them as one text file or deletes them. Filter by type, app or date to find anything fast.
Undo for deletes
Delete an entry or clear your history by mistake and get it back within 15 seconds with ⌘Z or the Undo button. Deleted entries are held in memory, never written anywhere, and forgotten when the time is up, when your Mac sleeps or locks, or when you quit.
Suggested for this app
Open Pocketry from Terminal, say, and the entries you keep pasting there appear at the top, with ⌥1 to ⌥3 to paste them. It learns from what you paste, keeps only a small encrypted note on your Mac, and one setting turns it off and forgets it.
Opens where you’re typing
Press your shortcut and the window appears next to your text cursor, not up in the menu bar. Choose your own shortcuts, pick the menu bar icon, or hide it completely.
Right-click quick actions
Right-click the menu bar icon to pause recording, clear your clipboard or history, take a screenshot to text, or quit. Pause for 5 minutes, 15 minutes or an hour and recording starts again by itself, or pause until you resume it yourself. The same menu has a Recent list of your last five text copies, so you can copy one without opening the window. Secrets, pictures and files are left out.
Smooth and easy to reach
Search and saving happen in the background, so typing stays responsive with a large history. VoiceOver announces undo, find similar and the number of search results, and changing a keyboard shortcut now has a visible Reset.
Privacy and security
Hides sensitive data
Ignores password managers, and hides API keys, tokens and card numbers, then deletes them after two minutes, and clears them from your clipboard once pasted.
Safe Paste for AI apps
Swap the emails, numbers and keys it recognises for placeholders like [EMAIL_1] when you paste into an AI app, and put them back with one click when you copy the answer, or automatically if you choose. It masks what it recognises, so read the limits. Names are optional and best effort, and off by default. Off until you choose it.
Paste Guard
Get a warning before pasting a download-and-run, encoded or script command into Terminal, or hidden characters into Terminal or an AI app. One switch turns it off.
Self-check
In Settings under Privacy, Self-check shows how Safe Paste and Paste Guard treat an app, and lets you try some text to see what would be masked or flagged, using throwaway placeholders. Handy before you trust it with the real thing.
Encrypted on your Mac
Your history, snippets and images are stored encrypted (AES-256), with the key kept in your Keychain. Copying the folder gets anyone nothing readable.
Lock it, and let it forget
Turn on the lock and Pocketry asks for Touch ID or your Mac’s password before it shows your history. Add auto-delete to clear old copies after a day, a week or a month. Both are optional.
Hide private details in pictures
One click covers emails, phone numbers, card numbers and keys in a screenshot with solid black boxes, so you can share the picture without them. It’s found on your Mac, never uploaded.
Power tools
AI on your Mac
Summarize, clean up, translate to English, or write your own actions like “polite email”. Ask a question or give an order such as “summarize my last 5 copies”. It uses Apple’s on-device model, so your text stays put.
Snippets that expand
Save text you type often, then type ;sig in any app and watch it appear. Add dates like “a week from now”, fill-in fields, a cursor spot, and folders. Bring yours over from another snippet app. If you keep pasting the same thing, Pocketry offers to save it as a snippet for you. You can also have snippets and pins show in Spotlight, where choosing one copies it. That’s off by default, in Settings › Privacy.
Type it out
For fields that don’t accept paste, such as some remote desktops, virtual machines and web consoles, right-click an entry and choose “Type it out”. Pocketry sends it as key presses, with no clipboard involved. It needs the same Accessibility permission pasting uses, stops if you switch apps, and has a Slow setting for remote desktops that drop letters.
Optional: let AI apps search your history
Let an MCP-compatible AI app or your terminal search what you copied, if you choose to. Off by default, read-only, approved tool by tool for an hour or a month. Secrets, pictures and files are never shared. An AI app can also suggest an entry, such as a reply it drafted; it’s saved only when you choose Add. What an AI app does with the text it reads is up to that app.
Rules and comparisons
Make rules like “links from Safari go in Reading” or “never record anything from this app”. Pick two copies and see exactly what changed between them.
Works with Shortcuts
Shortcuts and Siri can get your latest copy, search your history, pull a collection, or copy a snippet. Copy rules can run one of your Shortcuts on new copies, such as logging every invoice.
Handy for developers
Paste as Base64, a SHA-256 hash, a decoded URL or a decoded login token (JWT), or turn a timestamp into a readable date. Quick, and it all happens on your Mac.
QR codes and file text
Turn a link into a QR code for your phone, or read the QR code inside a picture. Copy a PDF or image in Finder and pull the text out of it, even a scan.
More questions
Can an AI app read my clipboard?
Only if you turn it on. In Settings, “Share history with other apps” is off by default. When it’s on, each tool (the Pocketry command-line tool, or an MCP-compatible AI app) asks you for permission in Pocketry the first time, and you choose how long: one hour or 30 days. A tool can search and read your copied text and suggest an entry, nothing more: it can’t change your history itself, and it never sees hidden secrets, pictures or files. Pocketry answers on your Mac, over a local connection. What an AI app does with the text it reads is up to that app, so switch this on only for apps you trust. It also stops working while the Touch ID lock is closed. You can limit a tool to pinned entries and collections, or to one collection, ask to be asked every time it reads, and see what it read in an activity log that never contains your clipboard text. An approval belongs to the app that asked for it, so if its key is used from a different app, Pocketry asks you again. An AI app can also suggest an entry, which shows as a card in the window and is saved only when you choose Add; suggestions expire after an hour. You can remove a tool at any time.
Does search send my clipboard anywhere?
No. The small model that finds entries by meaning is built into the app (it adds about 23 MB) and runs on your Mac. It uses no network connection. Your clipboard isn’t uploaded; signed releases do check for updates, which sends only the app version.
Is my history encrypted?
Yes. Your history, snippets and saved images are encrypted on disk with AES-256. The key lives in your Mac’s Keychain and never leaves the Mac, so the files can’t be read if someone copies them. macOS will ask once for your login password so Pocketry can use that key.
How does screenshot to text work?
Press ⌃⌥T, drag over the text you want, and release. Pocketry reads it with Apple’s on-device text recognition and puts it on your clipboard and in your history. The screenshot itself is deleted right away, never saved. macOS may ask for Screen Recording permission the first time.