Same clipboard. Same folder. Two very different paths.
One stage, run twice — every window below is a real screen capture.
The usual way
8 steps · multiple appsWith Klippster
2 steps · 0 appsThe usual way
4 steps · still rawWith Klippster
2 steps · typesetThe usual way
4 steps · manual cleanupWith Klippster
2 steps · ready to edit
WebP is encoded by cwebp, and switching a format on or off is a checkbox in Settings. In 0.9.0 that means a one-time brew install webp; from the next release the encoder ships inside the app. PNG, JPEG and HEIC need neither.
Markdown → PDF is built in: Klippster parses the Markdown and typesets the page itself. No pandoc, no LaTeX, nothing to install.
PDF → Markdown is built in too: Klippster reads the page with PDFKit and rebuilds the table from the text’s own geometry. Nothing to install.
The clipboard and your files, finally fluid
Klippster isn't a converter you open. It's a pair of shortcuts and a Finder menu that move content between the clipboard and files — in whichever direction you need.
Paste Clipboard as…
Copied a chunk of Markdown, a screenshot, a link? Drop it into the open Finder folder as a real file, in the format you pick.
Copy to Clipboard as…
Pull a PDF's text out as clean Markdown, plain text or rich text — tables and lists intact — ready to paste anywhere.
Convert to…
Same conversion, written straight to a sibling file next to the original. notes.md becomes a laid-out notes.pdf.
Try it right here
A working Finder, in your browser. Put something on the clipboard, then right-click the window to paste it as a file — or right-click a file to copy it back out.
- ✓Context-aware menu. The paste formats change with the clipboard — image gives you PNG, a link gives you WEBLOC.
- ✓Both directions. Right-click a PDF to copy it out as Markdown, or Convert to a sibling file next to the original.
- ✓No dialog. The new file just appears in the folder you're looking at — exactly like the real app.
A global shortcut that isn't, actually, global.
⌘⇧V is also macOS's “Paste and Match Style.” So Klippster only claims it while Finder is frontmost — it registers the hotkey when Finder activates and hands it back the moment Finder resigns.
Every other app keeps its shortcut untouched. You get a dedicated Finder command without stealing a keystroke from anywhere else.
Everything you copied, still there
Press ⌘⌥V anywhere and the last things you copied come back — searchable, pinnable, and still convertible. Because Klippster stores the clipboard content itself and not just a screenshot of it, every clip in here can do everything a fresh copy can.
A clip is still a clip
Other history apps hand you back text. Klippster stores the clipboard's real structure — rich text, HTML, image bytes, vector data — so a clip from last Tuesday can be pasted, written to a file in any format, converted, or opened in the Prepare Image editor. It's the whole app, pointed backwards in time.
- ✓Save any clip as a file. Right there in the inspector — the same writer, the same formats as ⌘⇧V.
- ✓Pin what matters. Pinned clips sit on top and never age out of the rolling history.
- ✓Override the format. Klippster guessed plain text but you know it's Markdown? Say so, per clip.
- ✓Quick Look with Space. A faithful render, exactly like Finder's.
History never starts recording on its own. Klippster asks once, on first run, and a missing answer counts as no — clipboards hold secrets, so absence of consent is never treated as consent.
Whatever's on the clipboard has a right format
Klippster reads the clipboard, figures out what it is, and offers only the formats that make sense.
Markdown
Detected with Apple's swift-markdown — real structure, not a regex guess.
Markdown renders as a laid-out PDF. Styleable fonts & colors.
PNG
Clipboard images written straight to an image file.
Rich Text
Keep bold, italics and styling from rich-text sources.
HTML
Save web content as HTML — or down-convert to text/Markdown.
Plain Text
The universal fallback. Clean, unstyled, everywhere-compatible.
SVG
Vector clipboard data preserved as scalable SVG.
Web Location
URLs become double-clickable macOS location files.
Markdown becomes a real PDF
Not raw # and * characters dumped onto a page. Actual headings, lists, bold, code and links — typeset.
# Release notes ## Highlights - **Format Packs** now install - PDF styling in Settings Run `make app` to build. See [the docs](/#).
renders
Release notes
Highlights
- Format Packs now install
- PDF styling in Settings
Run make app to build.
See the project documentation.
A focused editor, right before you export
Every image conversion can stop for a beat in a purpose-built editor — crop, resize, remove the background, pull out text, fine-tune the look — then save or copy in the exact format and size you need. No round-trip to Photoshop.
Crop & straighten
Freeform or fixed-ratio crops with a live upright preview.
FreeResize & presets
Exact pixels or one-tap presets, with a real encoded-size readout.
FreeBackground removal
Vision-powered subject cutout — remove or replace, fully on-device.
PROExtract text (OCR)
Pull selectable text straight out of any image, in reading order.
PROAdjustments
Brightness, contrast, saturation and warmth, applied at full resolution.
PROCompare formats
Every format encoded at its real size, with a smart pick for this image.
PRO pickOne colour. The whole app follows.
Pick an accent and Klippster derives everything from it — hover and pressed states, gradients, soft fills, focus rings, glow. Nothing is hard-coded per screen, so the palette, the history window, Settings and onboarding all move together. Try it:
Selected surfaces pick up a faint tint.
Follows macOS by default — or pin it either way.
Every control, gradient and focus ring is derived from this one colour.
Light and Dark, both real
Only the dark pair is authored; Light Mode is derived in HSB and re-checked, so neither is the afterthought. Windows follow macOS, or you pin one.
Readability isn't hoped for
WCAG luminance is measured across both gradient stops and the colour is clamped until it clears the bar — 3:1 for labels on a fill, 4.5:1 for links. All 48 built-in combinations pass.
A first run that checks its own work
Five steps, each one probing macOS for the real answer instead of trusting what you clicked — and it tells you plainly what you ended up with.
That's the whole product.
Everything above is free. It installs in about ten seconds and lives in your menu bar until you press the shortcut.
Run out of built-in formats?
Install more.
Community Format Packs are tiny WebAssembly converters that add new conversions to every surface — the shortcuts, the app, and every Finder menu. Browse and install them right inside Settings.
PDF Theme Packs
Ship a pandoc/LaTeX template that renders Markdown → PDF with your own house style. Unlimited layout.
New Converters
Any input → any output, defined by a manifest and a .wasm module. Text, data, whatever you can compile.
Fully Sandboxed
Packs run in a pure-Swift WASM interpreter with no host access — memory, size and time ceilings enforced.
Everything happens on your Mac
No account and no telemetry. Clipboard processing and optional history stay local; only explicit registry, update, support, purchase, and one-time licence activation actions use the network.
Local by design
Conversions and history stay on your Mac. History is off until you turn it on, skips password managers, and is never uploaded — though it is not end-to-end encrypted.
Native, not Electron
A real AppKit menu-bar app plus a Finder Sync extension. About 10 MB to download, with no bundled web runtime.
Sandboxed extension
The Finder extension has read-only, user-selected access and never runs converter code.
Verified distribution
Public builds are Developer-ID signed and notarized by Apple, and matched to a SHA-256-verified Homebrew cask. How that works →
Free to use. Pro when you need more.
Klippster and its formats are free forever. Pro unlocks the full Prepare Image toolkit and a deeper clipboard history — a one-time purchase, no subscription. Activate once online, then it works offline for good.
no licence, nothing to activate
The whole conversion engine. Not a trial, not time-limited, no watermark.
- All 8 built-in formats, both directions
- ⌘⇧V and ⌘⇧C, plus every Finder menu
- Markdown → typeset PDF
- Prepare Image: crop, resize, export
- Clipboard history — last 20 clips
- Community Format Packs
- Every tint, style and theme
move it between them any time
Pro sales open after the public beta.
- Everything in Free, plus:
- Clipboard history: folders & 200 clips
- Background removal (on-device Vision)
- Extract Text — OCR in reading order
- AI Auto-Crop
- Adjustments — brightness, contrast, warmth
- Smart format recommendation
- Metadata preservation & custom PDF styling
the whole household
Family licences open alongside Pro.
- Everything in Klippster Pro
- 10 Macs instead of 3
- For everyone in the household
- One licence file, one purchase
- Add and remove Macs yourself
- Cheaper than three separate licences
Paid licences activate once over the internet, then work offline for good — no subscription, no account required, and nothing about your clipboard is ever sent. No connection on that Mac? Activate it by hand from any other device.
Already bought? Manage your licence — move it to another Mac, get the file again, or take a copy of your data. Sign in with the address you paid with; we send a link, there is no password.
Questions worth asking
The things people reasonably want settled before installing a utility that reads their clipboard.
Is Klippster actually free, or is it a trial?
Free, and not time-limited. Every conversion, all eight built-in formats, both shortcuts, every Finder menu, Format Packs and the whole Appearance system cost nothing and never expire — no watermark, no nag screen, no account.
Klippster Pro is a one-time €19.99 that unlocks a deeper clipboard history and the AI-assisted parts of the Prepare Image editor, on up to three of your Macs. It is not a subscription. A €49.99 Family licence covers ten Macs for a household.
Is Klippster safe to install outside the Mac App Store?
Yes. Klippster is distributed directly, but every public release is signed with an Apple-issued Developer ID and notarized by Apple. macOS Gatekeeper checks that signature and the notarization ticket when you open the app, and can tell if signed software has been altered since it was signed.
Notarization is Apple's automated security scan for software distributed outside the App Store — it is not App Review, and it is not an endorsement. Klippster's clipboard processing also happens locally on your Mac, with no analytics or telemetry.
Does anything I copy leave my Mac?
No. Clipboard reading, conversion, file writing and history all happen locally, and there is no analytics or telemetry of any kind.
The network is only touched when you explicitly ask for it: browsing or installing a Format Pack fetches from the public registry on GitHub, buying Pro goes through Stripe, and a paid licence is activated once. None of those requests carries your clipboard — activation sends a licence key and a code identifying the Mac, and nothing else.
Does Klippster Pro need an internet connection?
Once, to activate. After that the licence is checked on your Mac and Klippster never contacts a licence server again — not at launch, not on a schedule, not ever. If our servers vanish, your Pro keeps working.
If the Mac you want to use has no connection, there is a manual route: Klippster shows a short code, you enter it on klippster.app from any other device, and you get a licence file for that machine. Nothing about the offline path is second-class.
A licence covers three Macs (ten with Family) and you can move it between them yourself at any time. That is what the one connection buys — without it, one purchase would quietly become a file passed around, and the free half of Klippster is what pays for the paid half to exist.
Will the clipboard history capture my passwords?
History is off until you switch it on, and a missing answer counts as no — Klippster never starts recording on its own.
Once on, it skips any copy the source app marks concealed or transient, and it skips copies made from the password managers on a built-in exclusion list (1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, LastPass, Keeper, KeePassXC, Enpass and Apple Passwords). You can add your own apps to that list, cap the size, or clear the whole history from the menu bar.
It is stored unencrypted in ~/Library/Application Support/Klippster/history, so treat it the way you would any local file.
Why does it ask for permission, and what breaks if I say no?
To answer one question: which Finder folder is frontmost. That is what lets ⌘⇧V drop a file into the window you are looking at instead of asking you where to put it.
Decline and Klippster still works — you keep the menu-bar app and every Finder right-click menu, and you lose the two keyboard shortcuts. Setup says so plainly rather than dead-ending.
Does ⌘⇧V steal the shortcut from my other apps?
No, and this took deliberate work. ⌘⇧V is also macOS's “Paste and Match Style”, so Klippster claims it only while Finder is frontmost and hands it straight back when Finder resigns. Every other app keeps the keystroke untouched.
The one exception is the clipboard history hotkey (⌘⌥V), which is global on purpose — it is useful from wherever you are typing. All of them are remappable in Settings.
Do I have to install the Finder extension?
No. The menu-bar app and the shortcuts work on their own. The extension is what adds the “Paste Clipboard as”, “Copy to Clipboard as” and “Convert to” submenus to Finder's right-click menu; macOS requires it to run from /Applications and to be enabled in System Settings.
What are Format Packs, and are they safe to install?
Format Packs are small community-built WebAssembly converters that add new conversions to every surface at once — the shortcuts, the app and all the Finder menus.
They run in a pure-Swift WebAssembly interpreter with no host imports at all: a pack cannot reach the network or the filesystem, and memory, output size and wall-clock time are capped. The registry index is Ed25519-signed and verified against a key compiled into the app before any file is trusted, then every file is checked against its SHA-256. The sandboxed Finder extension never executes pack code.
What does it run on?
macOS 14 Sonoma or later, as a Universal build for both Apple Silicon and Intel. It is a native AppKit app — around 10 MB, with no bundled web runtime.
How do I remove it completely?
Drag Klippster from /Applications to the Trash. To clear what it stored, delete ~/Library/Application Support/Klippster for the clipboard history, and Klippster's App Group container for installed packs, shared settings and an imported licence.
Put your clipboard to work.
Free, native, and out of your way until you press the shortcut.