The link you closed. The address you typed once. The paragraph you cut and never pasted. Paste Tense keeps what you copy on your Mac, in a folder you choose, and never takes any of it online.
Anywhere on your Mac.
Nothing is kept until you do.
What you copy lands in this week's file.
Press ⌃⌥⌘V, type a word you remember, copy it back.
Passwords, sign-in codes, messages, pieces of documents: a clipboard history is a privacy risk by nature. So Paste Tense was built to protect it.
It has no way onto the internet. It was built without one, and macOS keeps it that way. No account to make. Nobody on the other end.
Purchases and Apple's own opt-in crash reports are handled by Apple, not by the app. See the privacy policy.
Many password managers mark the secrets they copy. Paste Tense sees the mark and lets the item go unread. What it never reads, it can never keep.
Copying a password from somewhere else? Skip the next copy first.
Name the apps you'd rather keep out, and their copies are never read.
Works as well as macOS can tell which app did the copying.
Turn on encryption and every copy is locked the moment you make it. Paste Tense keeps recording while your history stays shut. Open it with Touch ID, your Mac login or a password of your own.
It locks again when your screen locks, or after a time you choose. What you read in the panel is held in memory and forgotten when it locks.
One plain-text file a week, in a folder you choose. Any text editor opens it. It will outlast every app you own, this one included.
While encryption is off, each week also gets a styled page for your browser.
paste_tense_archive_2026-11-01.txtPick a backup folder and every save lands there too, identical and checked. Put it in iCloud Drive and iCloud carries it. Paste Tense never does.
Nothing is recorded until you pick a folder and press Start. If that folder ever goes missing, Paste Tense pauses, tells you, and holds on to anything it hasn't saved yet.
It never asks to watch your screen, your keyboard or your whole disk. Even its shortcuts work without a permission prompt.
Copy a file in Finder and Paste Tense keeps a copy of its own, right beside the words you copied that day. Turn on encryption and those copies are encrypted too.
The picture you meant to send later.
The signed contract. Last week's draft.
The entire project, everything inside.
One click puts it back on your clipboard, ready to drop anywhere.
Files up to 25 MB are kept by default. Set your own limit in Settings.
Your encrypted history opens in one small page, in any modern web browser, with no Paste Tense needed. On a Mac, a Windows PC, a Linux laptop, an iPhone or an iPad. Bring your password or recovery key. That's all. Your history is never trapped inside an app.
One file you can keep on a USB stick, next to your recovery key. Double-click it on any Mac, Windows PC or Linux computer, with or without the internet.
The same page, in two placesTwo doors, one room.
Works in any current browser, iPhone and iPad included. Nothing to download, nothing to install.
Works in Safari 17, Chrome 133, Firefox 130 or later.
Press ⌃⌥⌘V anywhere and your history slides in from the edge of the screen, in light or dark glass that follows your Mac.
Type a word you remember. Narrow it by app, by date, to files or to links. Encrypted weeks too, once unlocked.
Pin the address, the sign-off, the line you paste ten times a day.
Click an item's copy button, or press Return, and it's back on your clipboard. Text pastes clean, with no stray formatting. Files come back as files.
Remove it. It's gone from that week's file and from your backup folder.
About to copy something private? Skip the next one, unread.
Pause for 5, 15 or 60 minutes. Recording picks up again on its own.
Empty the clipboard in one click, so the next app finds nothing there.
Copies from your iPhone or iPad land in your history too. One switch turns that off.
Choose how often Paste Tense checks for something new.
⌃⌥⌘V brings up your history from any app, with nothing to grant. Turn on the other shortcuts, or choose your own.
No subscription, no in-app purchases, no account. Prices outside the US are set by the App Store and may include local taxes.
Future versions will never remove functionality, and Paste Tense will never become a subscription.
If Apple or macOS ever takes away something the app depends on, we will say so plainly and keep everything else working. The details, and the honest limits, are in Our Promise.
No. It has no networking code and no network permission, so macOS blocks any connection. It has no account, no server and no analytics. Updates and purchases come through the Mac App Store, which is Apple's, not the app's.
Yes. Anything you copy as a file in Finder is kept: photos, PDFs, documents, even whole folders, up to a size you choose (25 MB to start). The copies sit beside your history and are encrypted with everything else when encryption is on. To keep a picture, copy its file in Finder.
In the folder you choose, one file per week, named after that week's Sunday, for example paste_tense_archive_2026-11-01.txt. While encryption is off, each week also gets a styled page you can open in your browser. Copied files sit in a folder beside them.
If your password manager marks it as secret, and many do, Paste Tense lets it go without reading it. The panel only notes that something was skipped. A password copied from a web page, a terminal or a note carries no such mark and is kept like any text, so press Skip next copy or Pause first, or add that app to your exclusions.
No. New copies are locked as they arrive, with no unlocking needed. You unlock only to read, with Touch ID, your Mac login or a password of your own.
With encryption on, only while it's unlocked, like anything else open on your screen. By default it locks again when your screen locks, or after a time you choose. With encryption off, your history is plain text that anyone using your Mac account can open.
Use your recovery key. Paste Tense makes one when you set up encryption with your Mac login, and with a password of your own it's one click in Settings. Keep it somewhere safe, away from your history folder. Without your password, your Mac login or your recovery key, nobody can open an encrypted history. Not you, not us. That is the point of encryption.
It's gone from your history folder and your Paste Tense backup folder. Time Machine, iCloud Drive and other backups keep their own earlier copies, so they may still hold it. The same goes for turning on encryption, so turn it on early.
Weeks without encryption are plain text, so any editor opens them. Encrypted weeks open in the decryptor: the copy you saved from the app works on any Mac, Windows PC or Linux computer, and decryptor.pastetense.app works in any current browser, iPhone and iPad included. Bring your password or recovery key.
No. Everything happens inside your browser tab, and the page tells your browser to refuse every connection, so it has no way to send anything anywhere. The host only sees that the page was loaded, as with any web page.
Paste Tense has no sync of its own. You can keep your folder or your backup folder in iCloud Drive; iCloud uploads it, Paste Tense never does. Encrypt first if your history goes anywhere near the cloud.
Yes. US$11.99 once. Paste Tense will never become a subscription, and future versions will never remove functionality.