Introducing ClipBear: A Smarter Clipboard Manager for macOS

Every developer has a clipboard workflow they're not proud of.

You copy a JWT from a curl response. You open jwt.io. You paste it. You scroll past the signature section. You copy the payload. You switch back to your editor. That's six steps to read a JSON object that was already on your clipboard.

Or you copy a MongoDB ObjectID and google "objectid to timestamp" for the third time today. Or you copy a single-line JSON blob from server logs and paste it into yet another formatting website because you can't read it inline.

These round-trips are small — 15, maybe 20 seconds each. But they happen dozens of times a day, and each one is a context switch that pulls you out of whatever you were actually working on.

ClipBear is a macOS clipboard manager built around a simple idea: your clipboard already has the data, so your clipboard manager should understand what it is and let you act on it right there.

What it does

ClipBear runs in your menu bar. You press a shortcut (default Cmd+B, customizable to anything), and your clipboard history opens as a sidebar. So far, standard clipboard manager territory.

The difference is what happens when ClipBear looks at what you've copied.

It detects content types automatically. Copy a JWT and a gray "JWT" badge appears on the entry. Copy a MongoDB ObjectID and the embedded creation timestamp shows up inline — no lookup needed. Copy 0 */6 * * 1-5 and you see "Every 6h, Mon–Fri" right below it. Copy an IPv4 address and you can convert it to CIDR /24 in one click.

Here's the full list of what ClipBear recognizes:

• JWTs — decode header or payload to pretty-printed JSON. No jwt.io tab.
• MongoDB ObjectIDs — embedded timestamp displayed inline.
• Unix timestamps — both 10-digit (seconds) and 13-digit (milliseconds), instant conversion.
• ISO 8601 datetimes — human-readable display + one-click "Copy as Unix timestamp."
• UUIDs — version badge (v1–v7), embedded timestamp extraction for v1 and v7.
• IPv4 / IPv6 — badge + one-click copy as CIDR /24 or /64.
• Cron expressions — 5-field cron → plain-English summary inline.
• Colors — hex, RGB, RGBA, HSL, HSLA detection with live swatch and format conversion.
• Emails and URLs — extract all addresses from a block of text into a clean list.
• JSON — one-click formatting with key quoting/unquoting.
• HTML / URL encoding — encode and decode in one click.
• URLs — copy any standalone URL as a 400×400 PNG QR code.
• Images — OCR text extraction (Apple Vision, on-device), format conversion (PNG/JPG/WebP), compression.

That's 13 content types detected automatically, with contextual actions for each.

How it handles privacy

Everything is local. There's no cloud sync, no account, no email stored.

Clipboard history is encrypted with AES-256-GCM. The encryption key is derived from your machine's hardware UUID — it's never stored in a file or keychain, never transmitted anywhere. Even if someone copies your history file, they can't read it without your hardware.

The AI grammar correction feature uses Apple's FoundationModels API (Apple Intelligence) — it runs entirely on your Mac's neural engine. The OCR uses Apple's Vision framework. Neither feature makes any network calls. The only network request the app makes is license verification.

There's also an app blacklist. Add your password manager, your banking app, or anything else you want excluded — ClipBear will ignore clipboard events from those apps entirely. Nothing stored, nothing logged.

The basics are solid too

Smart content detection is ClipBear's differentiator, but the standard clipboard manager features are all there:

• Pinned items — pin up to 5 entries, access them with Cmd+1 through Cmd+5.
• Smart search — Cmd+F to search your entire history.
• Content type filters — click a tag to show only JWTs, only URLs, only images, etc.
• Keyboard-first navigation — arrow keys, Enter to copy, Backspace to delete, Shift+arrows for multi-select.
• Multi-select — select multiple entries and copy them comma-separated, tab-separated, or in reverse order.
• Image support — thumbnails with size info, native macOS screenshot capture, styled screenshots with custom gradient backgrounds.
• Rich format preservation — stores HTML, RTF, and all clipboard formats. Re-paste something from last week with its original formatting.
• Configurable history — 10 to 500 items, auto-clear from 1 week to 6 months.
• Menu bar app — no dock icon, no floating windows. Opens and closes cleanly.

Not just for developers

The developer tools are ClipBear's sharpest edge, but a lot of what it does is useful for anyone who copies and pastes throughout the day.

Designers get instant color format conversion — copy a hex value from Figma and convert it to RGB or HSL without opening a converter. The styled screenshots feature wraps any screenshot in a gradient background with shadows, ready to drop into a presentation or a Slack message. And OCR means you can copy text from any image — a mockup, a photo of a whiteboard, an error dialog — without retyping it.

Writers and editors get AI grammar correction powered by Apple Intelligence, running entirely on-device. Copy a paragraph, see a "spelling" badge if corrections are available, and one-click copy the fixed version.

Everyone gets the core benefit: a clipboard that remembers more than one thing. If you've never used a clipboard manager, the experience of pressing a shortcut and seeing everything you've copied today — text, images, files, links — is one of those "how did I live without this" moments. Pinned items, search, and keyboard navigation make it fast to find and re-use anything.

ClipBear supports macOS Sonoma (14) and later, including Sequoia and Tahoe. Both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs are supported.

Pricing

$15/year after a 7-day free trial. One license covers 2 Macs. All features included — no tiers, no upsells.

The trial gives you full, unrestricted access to everything. Cancel before day 8 and you're never charged.

Try it

ClipBear is available now as an early release. Download it, use it for a week, and see if it changes how you work with your clipboard.

If you run into issues or have ideas for what content types to detect next, reach out at clipbear@bytezoolabs.com. Base64 decoding, regex validation, and hex/ASCII conversion are on the radar — but what developers actually want matters more than what we think is clever.