Pastily vs Maccy
Updated July 2026
vs
Maccy alternative
Best Maccy Alternative for macOS Clipboard Management
Compare Maccy with Pastily: Find out why custom workspaces, formatting previews, and cross-platform support elevate your workflow beyond menu lists.
Feature by feature
Maccy: macOS only · $9.99 on macOS App Store (or free open-source)
| Feature | Maccy | Pastily |
|---|---|---|
| Visual PreviewsMaccy is text-heavy; Pastily provides visual previews of images, color codes, and markdown. | Plain-text list only | Rich snippets, images, codes |
| Platform SupportPastily provides a unified workflow across Mac, Windows and Linux machines. | macOS only | macOS, Windows 10/11 & Linux |
| Custom SpacesMaccy lacks folders; Pastily lets you sort history into custom spaces with icons. | ||
| Sequential PastePastily features a FIFO sequential paste queue; Maccy is selection-only. | ||
| Keyboard FriendlinessBoth managers support rapid selection using keyboard number shortcuts (1-9). | ||
| Active Memory Footprint (RAM)Both background processes run extremely light on system memory. | 10MB - 20MB | Under 15MB |
| Search Latency (Performance)Both apps offer sub-millisecond shortcut query execution speeds. | Under 1ms | Under 1ms index search speed |
| Image ClipboardPastily keeps every image you copy — screenshots, Figma, the web — with a live preview right in your history. | Unlimited images | |
| 1-Click Image DownloadCopy an image, then save it straight to your Downloads folder from the clip — no app to paste it into first. | Save to disk in one click | |
| Auto-Disappear TimersGive any sensitive clip a self-destruct timer with a live countdown; it is wiped from history when time runs out. | 15s – 24h, plus custom | |
| Colour Hex PreviewCopied colour codes appear as a real swatch, with instant conversion between HEX, RGB and HSL. | Live swatch + HEX · RGB · HSL | |
| Live Clip CounterPastily shows how many clips you have at a glance, updating live as you copy and clear. | Live count in the menu bar |
Strengths & trade-offs
Maccy
- Extremely lightweight, native Swift menu-bar implementation
- Open-source and free if compiled from GitHub source code
- Very fast, keyboard-only default controls
- Limited to plain-text lists; lacks categorization tags or folders
- No support for Windows operating systems
- Difficulty reviewing long multi-line snippets visually inside the menu popover
Pastily
- Custom categorizations (Spaces) with colors and emoji indicators
- Gorgeous visual layout displaying formatted code, colors, and pictures
- Cross-platform configuration for developers using macOS, Windows and Linux
- Advanced sequential copy-paste queue (Universal Paste)
- V2: Image clipboard (unlimited), color previews, and auto-disappear timers
- Slightly larger disk size footprint than Maccy due to cross-platform framework
- No menu-bar popover alignment (uses a global overlay screen instead)
In depth
Minimalism vs. Organized Productivity
Maccy is the gold standard for menu-bar minimalist clipboard managers on macOS. However, power users quickly run into limitations when managing multiple project templates or frequently used code blocks. Pastily steps in by offering a gorgeous, keyboard-driven dashboard that groups clips into structured **Spaces** (like 'Coding templates', 'Support replies', or 'Emojis').
Visualizing Clipboard Contents
Because Maccy focuses on a simple dropdown list, viewing complex payloads—such as multi-line JSON structures, rich HTML formatting, or clipboard images—can be challenging. Pastily renders visual blocks of code with structural highlighting, displays high-fidelity image previews, and parses HEX colors into visual color boxes.
Questions
Is Pastily as fast as Maccy?
Yes! While Maccy is written in native Swift, Pastily utilizes a highly optimized native desktop wrapper coupled with custom SQLite indexing, keeping startup and global search hotkey triggers sub-millisecond.
Can I organize templates in folders in Maccy?
No. Maccy is a flat list of clipboard history items. Pinned items are kept at the top of the list, but you cannot organize them into separate tabs. Pastily supports custom 'Spaces' for categorizing and storing permanent templates.