How to copy text as Base64 on macOS
You can do this with Paste My. One shortcut encodes whatever is on your clipboard as Base64 and puts the result straight back, ready to paste.
Encoding something as Base64 is a two-minute job that usually takes ten, because the obvious route is to find a converter, paste your content into it, and copy the result back out.
That is a lot of steps, and it means your content has taken a trip through a web page on the way. For a test string that is merely tedious. For anything with real content in it, it is a decision you should not have to make.
The shortcut below does the conversion on your Mac, on whatever is already on your clipboard, and gives you the result in the same place you would have pasted it from anyway.
Encode the clipboard
Copy what you want to encode
Press ⌘C on the text — or on an image. Both work.
The clipping is saved to your history at this point, in its original form, which is what lets you get the unencoded version back afterwards.
Press ⇧⌘B
The clipboard's contents are encoded as Base64 and the result is put back on the clipboard, replacing what was there.
No window opens, nothing is uploaded, and it does not matter which app you are in.
Paste it where it needs to go
⌘V pastes the encoded string. Because the clipboard now holds the encoded version, you can paste it as many times as you need.
For a long image this can be a very large string — that is Base64 rather than anything about the conversion, and it is what the destination is expecting.
Get the original back
The original is still in your history, unencoded. Press ⇧⌘V, select it and press ⌘↩.
So the round trip is safe: encode, paste, restore, carry on.
Your history, newest at the top. The sources list is on the left; each entry carries a badge for the kind of thing it is.
Why doing it on your Mac matters
Base64 is not encryption. It is an encoding — anything encoded can be decoded by anyone, trivially. Which is exactly why the habit of pasting content into a web converter is worth breaking.
The things people encode tend not to be nothing: a certificate, a small config file, an image for an email signature, a credential-adjacent blob somebody asked for in that format. None of those are improved by a round trip through a page you did not write.
Paste My does the conversion on your Mac. There is no account, no upload and no network involved — the only time the app talks to the network at all is to the App Store when you buy or restore something.
Base64 makes content unreadable at a glance, not private. Treat an encoded secret as a secret. If a clipping is recognised as one, it is masked on screen in your history until you choose to reveal it.
Three more that work the same way
This is one of four shortcuts that act on the clipboard from anywhere rather than inside a window.
| Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|
| ⇧⌘C | Re-copy whatever is on the clipboard as plain text |
| ⇧⌘L | Copy a link with its tracking parameters stripped out |
| ⇧⌘B | Re-copy the clipboard as Base64 |
| ⌥⇧⌘F | Turn copied path text into real files |
All four convert what is on the clipboard and leave your history untouched, so none of them can lose you the original.
Where this fits in a day
Encoding is rarely the job — it is a step inside a job, which is why the round trip matters more than the conversion.
- Copy, encode, paste, restore. Four steps, three of them keystrokes, and the original is never at risk.
- Encode more than once. The clipboard keeps the encoded string, so pasting it into three places costs nothing extra.
- Come back to it tomorrow. The original is in your history with the app you copied it in and the time you did, so picking the thread back up does not depend on remembering.
If the same content gets encoded repeatedly, pin it. Pinned clippings sit at the top of every view and are never removed by cleanup — they do use history room, so pin only what you reach for often.
If the encoding is not what you expected
Nothing seems to have happened
The clipboard changed even though nothing on screen did — there is no window for this. Paste somewhere to see the result.
If the paste is the original text, the clipboard had moved on before you pressed the shortcut. Copy again, encode, then paste.
The result is enormous
Base64 makes content larger by about a third, and an image starts large to begin with, so an encoded screenshot is a very long string. That is expected.
If you are encoding images regularly, keeping preview-quality rather than full-resolution images produces a much shorter result.
You wanted to encode a file
The shortcut works on the clipboard's text or image. A file copied in the Finder is stored as a file, and copying files also records the plain text of their paths, so what you encode depends on which of those you put on the clipboard.
Questions people ask
Does it encode images as well as text?
Yes — the clipboard's text or image is encoded, so a copied screenshot works the same way a line of text does.
Is anything uploaded?
No. The conversion happens on your Mac. Paste My has no account and no servers, and the only network use anywhere in the app is the App Store when you buy or restore.
Can I decode Base64 with it?
⇧⌘B encodes what is on the clipboard. The original stays in your history, so the practical way back to unencoded content is to restore the clipping rather than to decode the string.
Will it work if I am offline?
Yes, completely. No part of this needs an internet connection.
Does the encoded string stay in my history too?
Putting a converted result on the clipboard is Paste My's own write, and it does not create a duplicate entry. Your history keeps the original you copied.
What if the text has accented or non-English characters?
They are encoded like anything else. Base64 works on the underlying content rather than on letters, so nothing is lost in the conversion.
Can I keep the original and the encoded version side by side?
The original stays in your history and the encoded string is on your clipboard, so you have both at once — restore the original whenever you want it back.
Get Paste My
Free on the Mac App Store. Everything you copy, kept on your Mac and ready the instant you need it again.