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PastePlop privacy policy

Last updated: May 2026

PastePlop is a desktop app that watches your Mac’s clipboard so you can paste things you copied earlier. It does not collect, transmit, or store any personal information about you on any server.

What PastePlop reads from your computer

The system clipboard, while the app is running. Each time you copy something, PastePlop records it in a local history kept in ~/Library/Application Support/PastePlop/ on your Mac. Nothing is sent anywhere — the contents stay on your machine.

Pause clipboard capture at any time from the menu-bar icon or the in-app menu, and clear the history with one click.

OCR (search inside images)

Screenshots and other copied images are run through Apple’s on-device Vision framework so the search field can find text that appears inside the image. The recognized text is stored alongside the image in the same local history. The image and the OCR result never leave your Mac.

What PastePlop sends over the network

One thing only: when you copy a URL, PastePlop fetches that URL’s public Open Graph metadata (the page’s title and preview image) so the URL tile can show a rich preview instead of a bare address. The request goes directly from your Mac to the URL you copied. PastePlop does not route through any third-party server. No identifiers, no analytics, no “phone home.”

The direct-download version (from bendansby.com/apps/pasteplop) also checks for software updates by fetching a public appcast.xml file from this domain. The Mac App Store version uses Apple’s update mechanism instead and has no such request.

Third parties

None. PastePlop does not embed any third-party SDKs, analytics frameworks, advertising libraries, or trackers.

Permissions PastePlop asks for

Accessibility. Required for the click-to-paste shortcut. macOS won’t let any app simulate the ⌘V keystroke into another app without it. PastePlop only uses Accessibility for that single keystroke; it does not read other apps’ UI.

Children

PastePlop is a productivity utility. It is not directed at children, and it does not knowingly collect information from anyone, of any age.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the “Last updated” date above will change with it. This page is the canonical source.

Contact

Questions? ben.dansby@gmail.com.