What is Pesty?

Pesty keeps a history of everything you copy and lets you get it back instantly. Hit a global hotkey, the strip slides up, you pick a clip with the arrow keys (or ⌘1–⌘9), press return, and it pastes straight into whatever app you were in.

It is a faithful, native reimplementation of the Paste experience - built in Swift + SwiftUI, with zero third-party dependencies, fully signed and notarized by Apple, and free forever.

Features

• Slide-up strip - full-width, translucent bar that springs up from the bottom of the active screen.
• Color-coded cards - each clip has a header band tinted per source app (consistent per app), with the app icon, type label, when it was copied, a preview, and a footer showing character count and a quick-paste number.
• All content types - plain text, rich text, links, images, files, and colors.
• Pinboards - save clips you reuse into named, color-tagged collections that never expire.
• iCloud sync - optionally keep your history and pinboards in sync across your Macs via iCloud Drive.
• Instant search - start typing to filter your whole history.
• Keyboard-first - arrow keys to move, return to paste, ⌘1–⌘9 to quick-paste, ⌫ or ⌘⌫ to delete, esc to close.
• Paste directly - drops the clip into the app you were using, no manual ⌘V needed.
• Privacy-aware - ignores clips marked concealed by password managers; history stored with 0600 permissions.
• Menu-bar app - runs quietly as a menu-bar item, optional launch at login.
• Native & light - a single universal .app, no Electron, no background web stack.

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew install --cask momenbasel/pesty/pesty

Direct download

1. Download Pesty-x.y.z.dmg from the latest release.
2. Open the DMG and drag Pesty to Applications.
3. Launch Pesty. It lives in your menu bar.

The build is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens without Gatekeeper warnings.

First run

1. Press ⌘⇧V (the default shortcut) to open the strip.
2. Pick a clip and press return.
   • Direct-download / Homebrew build: the first time you paste, macOS asks for Accessibility permission - grant it so Pesty can paste directly into other apps. You can change this anytime in Settings → Permissions.
   • Mac App Store build: fully sandboxed and requests no permissions - the clip is copied and focus returns to your app, so just press ⌘V to paste.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
⌘⇧V	Show / hide the strip (configurable)
⌘⇧S (with strip open)	Open Settings
⌘⇧P (with strip open)	Pause / resume clipboard monitoring
← → ↑ ↓	Move selection
return	Paste selected clip
⌘1–⌘9 (configurable)	Quick-paste the Nth clip; add the plain-text modifier (default ⇧) to paste unformatted
⌫ (search empty) or ⌘⌫	Delete selected clip
type anything	Search
esc	Clear search, then close

Build from source

Requires macOS 14+ and Xcode 16+ (Swift 6).

git clone https://github.com/momenbasel/pesty.git
cd pesty
swift run            # run in place
# or build a distributable .app:
VERSION=1.0.0 BUILD=1 ./scripts/build_app.sh
open packaging/Pesty.app

To produce a signed + notarized DMG (needs a Developer ID cert and an App Store Connect API key):

SIGN_IDENTITY="Developer ID Application: Your Name (TEAMID)" \
ASC_KEY="$HOME/.appstoreconnect/private_keys/AuthKey_XXXX.p8" \
ASC_KEY_ID="XXXX" ASC_ISSUER="<issuer-uuid>" \
./scripts/release_build.sh

Project structure

Sources/Pesty/
  Main.swift            entry point
  AppController.swift   app delegate, hotkey + menu-bar wiring, paste flow
  Models/               ClipItem, ClipType, Pinboard
  Store/                ClipboardStore (history, pinboards, persistence)
  Monitor/              ClipboardMonitor (pasteboard polling), PasteService (⌘V injection)
  Hotkey/               HotKeyCenter (Carbon global hotkey)
  UI/                   BarView, ClipCardView, PinboardTabs, the sliding panel
  Settings/             Settings store + preferences window + hotkey recorder
  Util/                 icons, color hex, visual-effect view, launch-at-login
scripts/                build, icon, sign + notarize
packaging/              Info.plist, entitlements, generated artifacts

Pesty vs other Mac clipboard managers

	Pesty	Paste	Maccy
Price	Free (optional one-time fee on the Mac App Store)	Subscription	Free
Open source	Yes (MIT)	No	Yes
Color-coded strip UI	Yes	Yes	No (list)
Pinboards	Yes	Yes	No
Source-app color coding	Yes	Yes	No
Native (no Electron)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Signed & notarized	Yes	Yes	Yes

Pesty reimplements the parts of Paste people use every day - the slide-up strip, color-coded cards, pinboards, search, and keyboard-driven pasting - as a free, native, open-source app. If you love Paste, buy it; it's excellent. Pesty is for people who want a free, hackable Paste app alternative, or a prettier alternative to Maccy with a strip UI and pinboards.

FAQ

Is Pesty free? Yes - free and open source (MIT) on GitHub and via Homebrew. The Mac App Store build carries a small one-time fee, but that's optional: it only helps cover the yearly Apple Developer Program fee that keeps the app signed and notarized. It's the same app either way.

Is Pesty a good clipboard manager for Mac? It keeps a searchable history of everything you copy (text, links, images, files, colors) and pastes it back with a keystroke - with pinboards and a color-coded strip.

Does it keep my clipboard private? Yes. Everything stays on your Mac - no servers, no analytics, no network calls - and password-manager clips are ignored.

What macOS does it need? macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, on Apple Silicon or Intel.

Keywords: clipboard manager for Mac, macOS clipboard history, free Paste app alternative, open-source clipboard manager, Maccy alternative, copy-paste history, clipboard pinboards.

🔗 Website: www.moamenbasel.com/pesty

Contributing

PRs welcome - see CONTRIBUTING.md. Good first issues: large preview pane, drag-and-drop out of cards, strip resize handle, iOS/iPad companion, more content-type renderers.

Also try

JMacy - the best and fastest downloader for macOS. Multi-connection segmented downloads that saturate your line, plus browser capture and torrents.

License

MIT © 2026 Moamen Basel.

Disclaimer

Pesty is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Paste or its makers (Wonder Warp / FIPLAB). "Paste" is referenced only to describe the inspiration. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.