KlippsterInstall
Four steps, one of which is a permission prompt you are allowed to decline. This page says exactly what you lose if you do.
#Download and open the disk image
Klippster ships as a DMG containing a single app.
The public beta is not open yet, so there is no download link on the site today. When it opens, the button in the header of this page becomes live.
Public builds are Developer-ID signed, notarized and Gatekeeper-tested, so the first launch
is an ordinary one — no right-click-to-open dance, no xattr incantation. If macOS
does refuse to open it, that is worth reporting rather than working around: it means the
signature did not verify.
#Drag it to Applications
This one is not cosmetic. macOS will only load a Finder Sync extension from an app in
/Applications, so running Klippster from
~/Downloads gets you the menu-bar app with no Finder right-click
menus, and no obvious reason why.
#Enable the Finder extension
Open System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions, find Finder extensions, and switch Klippster on. That is what adds the Paste Clipboard as, Copy to Clipboard as and Convert to submenus to Finder's right-click menu.
The menu-bar app and both keyboard shortcuts work without it. You only lose the right-click menus. If you prefer not to run a Finder extension at all, that is a supported way to use Klippster.
#Answer the Automation prompt, the first time you use a shortcut
macOS asks for permission to control Finder — the Automation (Apple Events) permission. Klippster needs it to answer exactly one question: which Finder folder is frontmost. That is what lets ⌘⇧V drop a file into the window you are looking at rather than asking you where to put it.
Only the two shortcuts need it. The Finder right-click menus do not, and neither do the Services rows.
If you decline, macOS records the denial and never prompts again. The shortcuts then fail with a "Could Not Save Clipboard" notification rather than re-asking.
To recover, open Klippster's Settings… → Finder Access. It shows an Allow Finder Access button if the permission was never decided, or an Open Automation Settings button if it was denied, which deep-links to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation. When permission is already granted, no button appears.
#What breaks if you decline
Less than you would expect, and the app says so rather than nagging.
| You still have | You lose |
|---|---|
| The menu-bar app and everything in it | ⌘⇧V — paste as a file |
| Every Finder right-click menu | ⌘⇧C — copy as another format |
| Clipboard History and its own shortcut | Nothing else |
| Every conversion, via the right-click menus |
You can change your mind later in System Settings; Klippster picks the shortcuts back up without a reinstall.
#Homebrew
A cask is planned and is not live yet. When it is, it installs the same signed build, verified against its SHA-256:
brew install --cask klippster#First run
Onboarding is five steps, and each one probes macOS for the real answer instead of trusting what you clicked — then tells you plainly what you ended up with. If the Finder extension is switched on in System Settings but macOS has not actually loaded it, the last screen says so rather than reporting success.
Klippster lives in the menu bar from then on. There is no window to leave open and nothing to launch before using a shortcut.
#Removing it completely
Drag Klippster from /Applications to the Trash. That stops everything,
but it leaves two things on disk:
~/Library/Application Support/Klippster— the clipboard history, including the sidecar files holding image and vector payloads.- Klippster's App Group container — installed Format Packs, settings shared with the Finder extension, and an imported licence.
Delete both and nothing of Klippster remains. Note that deleting the App Group container removes the imported licence too — on a Mac you intend to keep using, release the seat first so the licence does not stay bound to a machine that no longer has it.
Next: Quickstart.