macOS Tahoe: Spotlight clipboard history
- Open the Apple menu → System Settings → Spotlight.
- Turn on Results from Clipboard. It is off by default.
- Press Cmd+Space to open Spotlight, then Cmd+4 to show your clipboard history. The first time, approve the prompt that asks to allow clipboard results.
Items are kept for 8 hours by default. You can change that to 30 minutes or 7 days in the same settings, but not to anything longer. Recent Tahoe updates also add a button there to clear the clipboard history. If you need something for longer than that, save it somewhere permanent.
It only remembers what you copied after you turned it on.
macOS Sequoia and earlier
There is no built-in history. Universal Clipboard lets you copy on one Apple device and paste on another, but it shares the current item only and does not keep a list. For history you need a separate clipboard app, or a browser-based one such as vClipboard.
Retrieve a previous copy
If Spotlight history was on, open it with Cmd+Space then Cmd+4 and pick the earlier item. If it was off, macOS did not keep it. See the retrieve a previous copy guide for other places to check.
When Spotlight is not enough
- You are on an older macOS with no history at all.
- You want clips to stay until you delete them, not expire after hours or days.
- You need to keep files and images (up to 25 MB each in vClipboard) and search them later.
- You also use Windows or a phone and want the same list everywhere.
vClipboard only saves what you send to it: press Cmd+V on the page, or turn on auto-save while the page is open in a tab or installed as an app.