Paste, copy, convert

Klippster is not a converter you open. It is a pair of shortcuts and a Finder menu that move content between the clipboard and files, in whichever direction you need. All three conversions share one engine and one format list; what differs is only the source and the destination.

                    ┌─────────────┐
   Paste as…  ─────▶│             │
                    │  clipboard  │
   Copy as…   ◀─────│             │
                    └─────────────┘
                          ▲ │
                          └─┘  Convert to… never touches it —
                               file straight to sibling file

#Paste Clipboard as…

What it does: writes whatever is on the clipboard into the frontmost Finder folder as a new file, in a format you pick.

How: press ⌘⇧V with Finder frontmost, or right-click a folder (or the background of a window) and choose Paste Clipboard as.

What you get: a file in the folder that was open, named and ready. There is no save panel, because the folder is already the answer to the only question a save panel would ask.

The new file is named from the clipboard content where there is something to name it after, and otherwise from the time it was created — Clipboard 2026-07-05 14.30.00.md.

Click the preview to see it properly. The box on the right of the chooser shows what you copied, abbreviated to fit. Click it and the same thing opens full size: an image enlarged, text as a scrollable page you can select from, all of the files you copied rather than the first few. Press Esc or click anywhere to go back. Previews with nothing more to show — a disk image, a folder, a link — don't react to a click rather than opening an empty window.

#Which formats you are offered

The menu is built from what is actually on the clipboard, not from a fixed list. Klippster reads the pasteboard, decides what kind of content it holds, and offers only the formats that can represent it. Markdown detection uses Apple's swift-markdown rather than a regular expression, so a paragraph that merely contains a # is not mistaken for a heading.

This is why the menu looks different each time. A format that cannot represent what you copied is not greyed out, it is simply absent — an empty choice is worse than no choice.

Formatted text can always be saved as HTML. If you copy styled text — from Mail, TextEdit, Word, or a web page — HTML and Rich Text are both in the list, and the HTML file opens in any browser with the formatting intact. Accented characters and emoji survive: Klippster writes these files so browsers read them correctly, which is the difference between "Grüße" and "Grüße".

#What Klippster thinks your text is

For text, Klippster tells you what it recognised — Markdown, Code, or plain Text — and puts the matching format first. Code covers what you'd expect: a snippet from an editor, a chunk of terminal output, a stack trace, a diff, a config file. It's saved as plain text; naming it just stops a pasted log from being called Markdown and saved with an .md ending.

When nothing about the text is conclusive, you get plain Text. Klippster would rather say "text" than guess wrong, and you can always pick a different format from the list — or, in Clipboard History, tell an item it is Markdown and have it remember that.

#If you copied files in Finder

Copy a file (or several) in Finder and Klippster treats them as files, not as links.

• One file — you get that file's own conversions, the same ones the Convert menu offers: a copied PDF can become Markdown, Plain Text or Rich Text, a copied image another image format. The first row is always Paste As Is — the file exactly as it is, no conversion — so the choice between "a copy" and "a conversion" is one list, not two menus.
• A file Klippster can't convert — an installer, a disk image, or a file you've deleted since copying it — shows you what you copied instead: its name, size, kind and where it lives. There is nothing to pick, so it just says so.
• A folder — you get one choice: Compressed Archive, which zips it. A folder called Trip Photos becomes Trip Photos.zip, exactly as Finder's own Compress would name it. Copying the folder somewhere unchanged is what ⌘V already does; what nothing else on the Mac does is take a folder off your clipboard as a zip — so that is the one thing offered.
• Several files at once — you get two choices: Paste Files, which puts copies of them in the folder, or Compressed Archive, which zips them into an Archive.zip there.

Nothing is ever overwritten: a name that's already taken becomes report 2.pdf.

Copied files also show up in Clipboard History by name. Klippster remembers where they are, not what's inside them, so an item points at the real file — if you move or delete it, the history item says so rather than pretending.

#If you copied a link to a file

Copy a file:///… address as text — from a browser's address bar, a terminal, a chat message — and Klippster treats it as the file it points to, without losing the address:

• Paste As Is puts a copy of the file itself into the folder, and the usual conversions sit below it, just like a file copied in Finder.
• Link As Is keeps the address instead: it saves a clickable link file (.webloc) that opens the original. Link as Symlink puts a symbolic link in the folder — it wears the original's name, and apps that open it open the original directly. If you'd rather have the address as a plain text file, turn that option on under Settings → Context Menus → Paste → File Links (the same card also lets you switch the link rows off).
• Copy File turns the address into the real thing: it puts the file itself on your clipboard, so ⌘V in Finder makes a copy of it. You'll find the button in the ⌘⇧V chooser, in Clipboard History, and as Copy File to Clipboard in Finder's right-click menu.

Plain Copy in Clipboard History still gives you back exactly what you copied — the address as text — so nothing changes behind your back.

#Copy to Clipboard as…

What it does: reads a file and puts its content on the clipboard in a different format.

How: select the file in Finder and press ⌘⇧C, or right-click it and choose Copy to Clipboard as.

What you get: converted content on the clipboard, ready to paste anywhere. The file on disk is read only — nothing is rewritten.

From a PDF you can copy Markdown, Plain Text or Rich Text; from a Markdown file, a formatted PDF; from an image, another image format.

This is the one that saves the most time on PDFs. Selecting text in a PDF and copying it normally collapses the lists and tables; pulling it out as Markdown keeps the structure, so headings stay headings and tables stay tables where possible.

#Convert to…

What it does: the same conversion as Copy to Clipboard as, written straight to a new file beside the original instead of going through the clipboard.

How: right-click the file in Finder and choose Convert to. There is no keyboard shortcut for this one, because it is the only conversion that does not involve the clipboard at all.

What you get: a sibling file with the same name — report.pdf becomes report.md, notes.md becomes a laid-out notes.pdf with your headings, lists, bold/italic, code and links, photo.heic becomes photo.jpg. If a file with that name already exists, it adds a number (report 2.md). The original is untouched.

#The Services route

There is a second way into all three conversions, and it matters more than it sounds: macOS Services. Right-click and look under Services for Paste Clipboard Here, Copy to Clipboard as…, Convert with Klippster… and Edit with Klippster….

These exist because the Finder right-click submenus come from a Finder Sync extension, and macOS never calls one inside iCloud Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive — which includes ~/Desktop and ~/Documents once Desktop & Documents syncing is on. Services are dispatched by macOS itself, so they appear in exactly the places the extension cannot reach, and they need no permission at all.

The trade is that a Service is a static declaration and cannot carry a per-format submenu. Each row opens Klippster's ordinary format chooser instead of pre-selecting a format — one extra click, in return for working everywhere. There is also a Klippster button for the Finder toolbar that keeps the full format lists; Troubleshooting covers all the routes into these folders.

#Edit Before… — prepare a Klipp first

When a conversion involves an image or text, each of the three menus above offers an extra Edit Before Saving… / Converting… / Copying… item, which pauses the conversion in an editor first:

• An image — a copied screenshot, or an image file in Finder — opens in Prepare Image: crop, resize, remove the background, then export in the exact format and size you need.
• Text — on the clipboard, or a text file selected in Finder (Markdown, plain text, rich text, HTML) — opens in Prepare Text: the editor twin of Prepare Image.

A Klipp with nothing to edit — a link, an SVG, a file Klippster can't open in an editor — simply gets no button, rather than one that's greyed out.

Any conversion that produces an image can also stop in Prepare Image on its own — Finder's submenus offer Edit Before Saving…, Edit Before Copying… and Edit Before Converting…, and the ⌘⇧V and ⌘⇧C choosers offer the same detour as a button (⌘E).

That is a setting, not a prompt: if you would rather every conversion just write the file, switch Offer to edit before converting off under Settings → General and all of them disappear. The editors stay where they are — Edit with Klippster… at the top of Finder's right-click menu, and the Edit button on a Klipp, are how you open one on purpose.

#Choosing which formats appear

Open the menu-bar K → Settings… to choose which formats each menu offers — the Finder right-click menus under Context Menus, and both hotkey choosers, ⌘⇧V and ⌘⇧C, under Format Chooser. They are configured separately, so you can tune each to taste. Changes to the Finder menus take effect the next time you right-click.

Context Menus shows you the menu itself, and you change it by changing the menu:

• Start with the verb: Paste, Copy or Convert. Those are the three submenus Finder shows, and you edit one at a time. Copy and Convert offer the same formats — a Convert is the same conversion written to a file next to the original instead of onto the clipboard — so editing one changes both.
• Pick a content type from the list on the left — Images, SVG, Text, Links, PDF, File Links for what's on the clipboard under Paste, or PDF, HTML, Rich Text, Images for the file you right-clicked under Copy and Convert. Each row lists the formats that menu currently offers. Typing in the search box matches format names too, so "pdf" finds every type that can produce one.
• Then edit the menu in front of you. Drag an item by its handle to move it — Finder follows that order, so put what you use most at the top. Click the eye to remove an item, and the + Add Format row at the bottom of the list puts anything back. The count in the header is how long the menu ends up in Finder; it turns orange once the menu gets unwieldy.
• Click any item and the line underneath says what that format is good for — or, for the few formats that need a tool you don't have, what is missing.
• Greyed rows at the bottom are the ones Finder adds itself — installed Format Packs, PDF (page setup)…, Edit Before Saving… — shown so the menu is honest about its own length. You change those by installing or removing a pack, not here.
• The pills at the top switch every type of the current verb between Recommended, Minimal and Everything, and read Custom once you've made your own changes. Restore Defaults… at the top of the pane resets all three verbs, and asks first.

Changes save as you make them — there is nothing to confirm. The ⌘⇧V and ⌘⇧C choosers are configured the exact same way under Format Chooser — the same tabs, type list and drag-to-reorder preview, one tab per way into the dialog. Shortcuts binds the keys; what the keys then offer lives with the menus.

#What the big button does

Two of the dialogs can send the same conversion to more than one place, and there the blue button has a chevron on its right edge. Click the button and you get the destination it names; click the chevron and the others are right there:

So a Klipp you opened to look at can be edited and put straight back on the clipboard, and a file you converted with ⌘⇧C can be saved or sent on without a second trip. Share hands the converted result to the usual macOS share sheet — Mail, Messages, AirDrop, whatever you have installed.

Which destination the button itself fires is up to you: Format Chooser ▸ Primary Button, one row per dialog. Whatever you pick, the other destinations stay one click away under the chevron, and ⌘C always means "put it on the clipboard".

⌘⇧V has no chevron, deliberately — it writes into the Finder folder you are looking at, and that is the whole point of the key.

#When a conversion is not available

Not every pair of formats makes sense, and Klippster does not pretend otherwise. If a file's type has no conversions defined, the Copy to Clipboard as and Convert to submenus appear dimmed rather than empty, so the answer is visible without a click.

If the pair you want is missing entirely, that is what Format Packs are for — a pack adds its conversions to all three of these surfaces at once, not just to the one you installed it from.

#Setup notes

• Klippster must be running (the K menu-bar icon) for the shortcuts and menus to work.
• The Finder right-click menu comes from a Finder extension — enable it once in System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Finder extensions, and Klippster must be installed in /Applications.
• The first time you use a keyboard shortcut, macOS asks permission for Klippster to control Finder — allow it so Klippster can find the right folder or file. Install covers the prompt, and what still works if you decline it.

Next: Formats, for what each of the eight actually produces.