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How to See What Is on the Clipboard on Mac

With Pasteboard Viewer

Pasteboard Viewer is a tool for developers and for the curious. It is not a clipboard manager, and it does not keep a history. To only see the text or the image that you copied, use the built-in ways.

  1. Open Pasteboard Viewer. When macOS asks to let it paste from other apps, allow it.
  2. Copy something in another app. The window updates immediately.
  3. In the sidebar, click a type, like public.utf8-plain-text, public.rtf, or public.html, to see the content in that format.

Tips

  • To see the bytes of the content, choose “Hex” in the “View” menu, or press Command2.
  • The “Pasteboard” menu switches to the other pasteboards of macOS, like the ones for drag and drop and for the Find text.
  • To find why an app pastes text with the wrong format, look at which types the copy has. An app that pastes plain text takes public.utf8-plain-text.
  • To stop the prompt each time, allow the app in “System Settings › Privacy & Security › Paste from Other Apps”.

Get Pasteboard Viewer

Inspect the system pasteboards

Download on the App StoreSource Code

Free

Platforms
macOS, iOS, visionOS
Requires
macOS, iOS, or visionOS 26 or later
Category
Developer Tools
Released
February 2020
Privacy
No data collected
Updated
March 2026
Version
2.12.0
Size
7 MB
US App Store rating
5.0/5 (20 ratings)

More about Pasteboard Viewer

Without an app

For most people, the built-in ways are enough, and Pasteboard Viewer is more than you need:

  • What is on the clipboard now: Click the desktop or a Finder window, and choose “Edit › Show Clipboard”. A window shows the text or the image.
  • What you copied before: On macOS 26 or later, press CommandSpace, and then Command4. The first time, click “Allow”. Spotlight shows the items that you copied, and you can paste one of them again.

Finder shows only one form of the content. When you copy text from a web page, the clipboard has the text in several formats, and each app takes the one that it wants when you paste. Finder cannot show which formats there are.

To empty the clipboard, see how to clear the clipboard.

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