Your clipboard, always propped up.
A free clipboard history manager for macOS. Your Mac remembers only the last thing you copied. Kickstand remembers all of it, handed back from the menu bar with one keystroke, without a single byte leaving your machine.
Features
Does one job.
Deliberately little else.
No sync, no accounts, no plugin marketplace. A history you can search, pin and paste, built to disappear the moment it is done.
Search that reaches inside
Matches as you type, including text the one-line preview never shows. Switch on fuzzy matching and kcksd finds kickstand-notes.txt.
Pins that outlive everything
Pinned items sit on top, ignore the history limit and survive Clear History. Reorder them with ⌥↑ and ⌥↓.
Text and images, side by side
Two lists, ← → between them. Thumbnails render at whatever height suits you, from 24 to 96 points.
Sorted the way you think
Last used floats items you recently pasted back to the top. First copied keeps the original order, so reusing an old item never moves it.
Every key is yours
The global shortcut, paste, pin, delete and close are all rebindable. In-popup bindings can be bare keys, because the list owns the keyboard.
Measured, not asserted
The build fails if the popup takes longer than 100 ms to open, or search longer than 5 ms against a full 999-item history.
Screenshots
Press ⌘⇧4. It is already on your clipboard.
Turn this on and Kickstand watches your screenshot folder. Every region grab you
take with ⌘⇧4 is copied to the clipboard the moment it lands, so the
very next ⌘V pastes the image. No opening Finder, no dragging a file
into a chat window.
⌘⇧3 captures are left alone entirely. Kickstand can also move the leftover file to the Trash once its contents are safely on the clipboard, so screenshots stop piling up on your Desktop. Always the Trash, never a permanent delete.
Keyboard first
Your hands never leave home row.
The list owns the keyboard, so single letters are shortcuts. ⌘F starts a search and ⌘F again puts you back. Arrow keys return you to the list too, keeping whatever you typed.
The default. Rebindable to anything with at least one modifier.
Move through the list
Switch between Text and Images
Paste the selected item
Paste any of the first nine items directly
Pin or unpin the selected item
Delete the selected item
Move a pinned item up or down
Start or stop searching
Open Settings
Leave the search field, or close the popup
Privacy
Everything stays on your Mac.
No account. No network access. No telemetry of any kind. A clipboard manager sees everything you copy, so the only defensible design is one that cannot send it anywhere.
Passwords are never recorded
Kickstand checks the standard concealed-pasteboard markers and skips those items before reading them. 1Password, Bitwarden and Keychain Access are covered out of the box.
Exclusions you control
Name any app whose copies should never be recorded, or any pasteboard type to skip. An item carrying an ignored identifier is dropped entirely, not stored in another form.
Permissions stay optional
Accessibility, only when it pastes for you. Decline it and Kickstand copies instead. Files access, only if you turn on screenshot copying. Both are explained when they come up.
Owner-readable storage
A SQLite database in ~/Library/Application Support/Kickstand, plus a blob directory for payloads over 256 KB.
Delete means delete
Removing an item removes its bytes immediately. Clear History keeps your pins. Clear Everything asks first, then does not.
Screenshots stay local too
The watcher reads your screenshot folder and nothing else, only while the setting is on, and only to put the image on your own clipboard.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
The things worth knowing before you rely on a tool that sees everything you copy.
Is Kickstand free?
Yes, and it stays that way. There is no trial, no pro tier, no subscription, and nothing in the app sits behind a purchase.
Does Kickstand work offline?
Entirely. It has no network access, no account and no telemetry of any kind. Your clipboard history never leaves your Mac.
Does it record passwords?
No. It checks the standard concealed-pasteboard markers and skips those items before reading them, which covers 1Password, Bitwarden and Keychain Access. You can exclude any other app or pasteboard type yourself.
Can it save images and screenshots?
Yes. Images get their own list alongside text, and every ⌘⇧4 region grab can land on the clipboard automatically, ready to paste.
Which versions of macOS are supported?
macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Kickstand lives in the menu bar and has no Dock icon.
When can I download it?
Not yet. The app is built and working; what remains is signing and notarization. It will then ship as a signed .dmg you drag to your Applications folder.
A signed .dmg is on the way.
Everything on this page is built and working. What is left is signing and
notarization, the part that lets macOS open the app without arguing about it.
Once that is done, Kickstand ships as a normal .dmg: open it, drag
the app to Applications, press ⇧ ⌘ C
and it is yours.
Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens with no warning.
Free now.
Free later.
Kickstand will never have a paid version, and nothing in it will ever sit behind a purchase. It is a small tool that does one job, and it should just be there when you need it. If it ends up saving you real time, you are welcome to put a coffee on the tab.
Donations open alongside the first release. No pressure, ever.