How to Use Raycast Clipboard History on Mac

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Pastea Team
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4 min read

Raycast already has a clipboard manager. If Raycast runs on your Mac, open it, type Clipboard History, and press Return. Search for something you copied earlier, select it, and press Return again to paste it into the app you were using.

The command works better after two small setup decisions: give it a hotkey and decide how long history should be kept. Here is a practical setup based on Raycast's current Clipboard History manual, checked September 29, 2026.

Open history and give it a shortcut

  1. Open Raycast's main search window.
  2. Search for Clipboard History and run the command.
  3. In Raycast Settings, open Shortcuts or Clipboard History and assign a hotkey to the command.
  4. Copy two harmless pieces of text in different apps, then press your new hotkey and search for one of them.

There is no universal default clipboard-history hotkey to memorize: Raycast recommends assigning one that fits your Mac. Choose a combination you can press from the app where you write, and check that it does not already trigger that app's own command. For example, ⇧⌘V is Paste without formatting in Google Docs, so it can be an awkward global hotkey if you write there often.

Find and reuse an older copy

Once the history window is open, type a phrase, filename, URL fragment, or another clue. Raycast records text, images, files, links, email addresses, and colors. Press ⌘P to narrow the list by type when a broad search finds too much.

With an entry selected:

  • Press Return to paste it into the active app, if Paste to Active App is your primary action.
  • Press ⌘Return to copy the entry back to the current clipboard.
  • Press ⌘K to see actions such as Paste as Plain Text, Copy Text from Image, Rename Entry, Pin Entry, and Delete Entry.

Raycast lets you change the Return behavior to Copy to Clipboard in Settings → Clipboard History → Commands → Clipboard History → Primary Action. If Return seems to copy but not paste, inspect that setting before troubleshooting macOS permissions.

One useful example: copy an error message, then copy a file path before you finish using the error. Open Raycast history, search a distinctive word from the error, and paste it back. If the copied item was a screenshot, Raycast's on-device text recognition can make text inside it searchable when Text Recognition is enabled.

Choose the right paste format

Raycast can keep the formats supplied by the source. An entry may offer rich text, plain text, RTF, HTML, or another representation. Use Paste as… in the Action Panel when the destination needs a specific format.

For a clean paragraph in a document, choose Paste as Plain Text. If you usually want that behavior, turn on Prefer pasting as plain text in Clipboard History settings. Leave it off when you regularly move styled text, tables, or other rich content and want the destination to receive the source format.

This setting controls how Raycast pastes from its history. It does not change the shortcut your destination app uses for its own plain-text paste. Our Mac plain-text paste guide covers those app-specific shortcuts.

Set retention and protect sensitive copies

Open Raycast Settings → Clipboard History and review Keep history for. Raycast documents one day, one week, one month, and three months on its free plan. Six months, one year, and unlimited retention require Pro. Longer retention is not selected automatically when you upgrade; choose it in Settings if you want it.

Then review Disabled Applications. Raycast includes common sensitive sources such as Passwords and Keychain Access and lets you add more. A banking app, password manager, or work app may belong there. After adding one, copy a harmless test value from it and confirm it does not appear in history.

To remove one saved item, select it and use Delete Entry from ⌘K (Raycast also lists ⌘X). The Action Panel has bulk deletion by recent time window and Delete All Entries. Review what you are deleting before using a bulk command. Clearing Raycast history is separate from replacing the current Mac clipboard or clearing Spotlight history; our Mac clipboard-clearing guide explains the layers.

When Raycast is enough

If you already use Raycast and mostly need fast search, recent recovery, pins, snippets, and occasional screenshot text, start here. It is a capable clipboard manager. A second app adds another history to manage and another privacy configuration to check.

We build Pastea, a separate Mac clipboard app. It becomes interesting when your copies should live in named lists, include screenshots saved to a folder, or be searched by an approved coding tool through MCP. If those are your reasons to look beyond Raycast, our Raycast clipboard alternatives comparison lays out the tradeoffs. Otherwise, keep the tool already in your workflow.

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