Kept vs Paste
Paste is the best-looking clipboard manager on the Mac: a shelf of cards across the bottom of the screen, pinboards, and sync to your iPhone and iPad through iCloud. It is a subscription. Kept is free, keeps everything on one Mac, and puts the card at your cursor instead of the bottom of the screen.
One of the Kept, compared pages.
| Kept | Paste | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Paid subscription |
| Source | Private | Private |
| Open with | ⇧⌘V for the card, ⌥⇧⌘V for the panel, or click the menu bar icon | ⇧⌘V |
| Where it opens | At your text cursor; the panel under the menu bar icon | A shelf across the bottom of the screen |
| Return | Return pastes into the app you were in | Return pastes |
| Plain text | ⌥Return; plain by default into Slack, terminals and browsers | ⇧Return |
| Numbers | 1 to 9 in the card, ⌘1 to ⌘9 in the panel | ⌘1 to ⌘9 |
| Search | Full text, as you type, in the card and the panel | ⌘F |
| Sync | None, on purpose | iCloud, to iPhone and iPad |
| Network | No networking code; checked on every build | Uses iCloud for sync |
| Terminal | The kept command lists, searches and copies history | None |
Keep Paste if
- You paste on your iPhone what you copied on your Mac. Kept has no sync, by design.
- You like organising clips into pinboards.
- You want the shelf look.
Switch to Kept if
- You would rather not pay a subscription for a clipboard.
- You want nothing about your clipboard to leave the Mac, ever.
- You prefer the history at your cursor to a shelf at the bottom.
- You paste into web apps and terminals all day and want plain text there without thinking.
Switching
In Kept's welcome window, or in Settings › General, choose "Paste" under "Use the shortcut from". Kept then opens with the shortcut your hands already know. Your Paste history stays in Paste; Kept starts collecting from the moment it runs. Download Kept, free, for macOS 14 or later.
Facts as of October 2026, from Paste's own documentation. Something wrong or out of date? Say so and it gets fixed.