How to pin a clipboard item on macOS
You can do this with Paste My. One keystroke moves a clipping to the top of every view and keeps it there, safe from cleanup for as long as you want it.
There is a small set of things you paste over and over: an address, a licence key, a bank reference, a paragraph of boilerplate, the link to the standup call. Searching for them every time is a tax you pay several times a day.
Pinning takes them out of the flow. A pinned clipping sits at the top of every view and is never removed by cleanup, so nothing you copy afterwards can bury it.
Pin a clipping
Find the clipping and select it
Press ⇧⌘V to open your history, then click the clipping you want. If it is a while back, ⌘F and a word will get you there faster.
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. Press ⌘P
That is the whole action. The clipping moves to the top and stays there.
The same key unpins it, so nothing you pin is permanent in a way you cannot undo.
What pinning actually changes
Three things — two of them the reason to pin, and one of them the reason to be choosy about it.
- It floats to the top of every view. Not just the main list — everywhere you look at your history, including the menu-bar picker.
- Cleanup never touches it. Clearing your history leaves pinned clippings alone, and so does removing items older than a number of days.
- It uses history room. A pinned clipping occupies a place in your history like any other, so on the free version pinning several things leaves less space for the ordinary flow. Pin what is genuinely worth it.
See only what you pinned
Search for
pinned:yesand the list becomes your own shortlist and nothing else.pinned:nodoes the opposite when you want to look through the ordinary flow without your pins in the way.The sidebar also has a Pinned section, which is the same thing without typing.
What is actually worth pinning
Pinning is most useful for things that are short, exact, and annoying to retype — where getting a character wrong matters and where you use them weekly rather than once.
- Your postal address, and a second one for work
- A licence key or account reference you are asked for repeatedly
- The standing link to a call you join every week
- A block of boilerplate — a signature, a disclaimer, a standard reply
- A command you run often enough to have memorised badly
What is not worth pinning is anything you can find with one word in a second. A pin list of forty things is a list you have to search, which is the thing you were trying to avoid — and because pinned clippings use history room, a long pin list also leaves less space for everything else.
Pinning is not a substitute for a password manager. Likely secrets are masked on screen and anything a password manager marks as private is never stored at all — but a pinned clipping is meant to be easy to reach, which is the opposite of what a credential wants.
Pins, stashes and tags do different jobs
Three ways of organising, and it is worth being clear about which one a given problem wants, because they do not overlap as much as they first appear.
- A pin is about reach. One clipping, always at the top of every view, always one keystroke away. Best for the handful of things you paste constantly.
- A stash is about grouping. A named collection you gather related clippings into over time — everything for one project, one trip, one piece of work. Stashed clippings are protected from cleanup too.
- A tag is about labelling. Your own colour-coded labels, applied across the history, with a count in the sidebar so you can see how much of each you have.
A rough rule: if you would be annoyed to search for it, pin it. If it belongs with other things, stash it. If you want to find it later by category rather than by name, tag it.
Sessions are the fourth way, and you do not have to do anything to get them — clippings made in the same app around the same time are grouped for you, so you can revisit everything you gathered while working in one place.
If pinning is not behaving
The pinned clipping is not at the top
If you have several pinned clippings they share the top of the list between them, so a new pin sits among the others rather than above everything.
Search pinned:yes to see just that group, or unpin the ones you no longer need — a shorter pin list is a more useful one.
A pinned clipping has disappeared
Pinned clippings are not removed by clearing your history or by age-based cleanup, so a missing one has almost certainly been unpinned and then aged out normally.
⌘P toggles, so pressing it on something already pinned unpins it.
Pins are eating into your history
They will — a pinned clipping uses history room like any other, so a long pin list on a small room leaves less space for the ordinary flow.
That is the trade, and it is worth making deliberately: pin the handful of things you reach for constantly, and unpin with ⌘P when one stops earning its place.
Questions people ask
How many things can I pin?
You can pin on the free version, but pinned clippings use history room like anything else — so on a small room a long pin list leaves little space for the ordinary flow. Pin only what is important, and unpin with ⌘P when it stops being.
Do pinned items survive clearing my history?
Yes. Clearing removes everything except the clippings you pinned or stashed, and it asks you to confirm before it does.
What is the difference between pinning and stashing?
A pin keeps one clipping at the top of the list. A stash is a named collection you gather related clippings into over time. Both are protected from cleanup; a pin is for reach, a stash is for grouping.
Do pinned clippings show in the menu-bar picker?
Yes — pinned clippings float to the top of every view, and the picker is one of them. So the things you pinned are usually ⌘1 through ⌘9 away.
Can I pin an image or a file?
Anything in your history can be pinned, whatever kind it is.
Can I add a note to a pinned clipping?
You can attach your own note to any clipping, pinned or not — useful when a licence key or reference number needs a reminder of what it belongs to.
Does pinning stop the clipping being masked if it is sensitive?
No, and that is deliberate. Masking is about what is shown on screen; pinning is about where a clipping sits in the list. A pinned item that was recognised as sensitive is still hidden until you choose to reveal it.
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