TypeFire 3.0: Text Expander and Clipboard Manager for Mac

TypeFire started as a text expander for Mac: type a short abbreviation, get the full text, anywhere on your system. Version 3.0 is the biggest release since launch, and it changes what the app is.

TypeFire is now two things that work together. Snippets, the text you write on purpose. And Clips, everything you copy. Both live in one app, both are searchable from anywhere on your Mac, and both are covered by a single one-time purchase of $18. No subscription.

This post covers everything new since version 2.1, from the headline features down to the small details.

What is new in TypeFire 3.0, at a glance

Clyp: a clipboard manager that remembers everything, privately

Your Mac forgets what you copied the moment you copy something else. Clyp is the clipboard manager built into TypeFire 3.0, and it is a proper one rather than a list of recent strings.

It can search inside your screenshots

This is the feature people do not expect. TypeFire reads the text inside every image and screenshot you copy, using on-device OCR built into macOS. Search for a word you saw in a screenshot and the screenshot comes back. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is charged, and it works offline.

It is also on the free tier, which as far as we know makes TypeFire the only Mac clipboard manager that gives you OCR search without paying first.

It is encrypted, and it skips your passwords

The clipboard database is encrypted with SQLCipher, the key lives in your macOS Keychain, and the file is readable only by your user account.

Passwords copied from 1Password, Bitwarden or your browser's autofill are never captured. Password managers mark what they put on the clipboard as confidential, and TypeFire respects that marking rather than checking against a list of apps, so it protects password managers we have never heard of too.

Quick Paste, without leaving your work

Press ⌃ ⌘ ⇧ V anywhere in macOS. A search field appears over whatever you are working in. Type to filter, arrow to the clip you want, press Enter, and it is pasted. You never switch apps and you never lose your place.

The clip-to-snippet loop

The thing no other clipboard manager can do: promote a clip into a real snippet in one click. You copied a paragraph for the fourth time, so give it an abbreviation and stop looking it up. Clipboard managers have no snippet engine and text expanders do not watch your clipboard. TypeFire was a text expander first, which is why the loop closes at all.

Everything else in Clyp

• Per-clip actions: copy, paste as plain text, open, copy file path, pin, tag, rename, and "remind me in an hour"
• Rename any clip, so [Image 900x560] becomes "Q3 pricing table" and is searchable by that name
• Sort by recency, size, or how often you have used a clip
• Retention you control: keep clips by age, by count, or by a disk budget in MB, GB or TB

Selection Prompts: rewrite any text, in any app

Selection Prompts turn the AI you already have into something you can use anywhere on your Mac.

1. Highlight text in any app that accepts text.
2. Trigger the prompt with its abbreviation or its own keyboard shortcut.
3. The result replaces what you highlighted.

Rewrite. Fix grammar. Translate. Summarise. Change tone. Explain something simply. TypeFire ships with eight starters and you can write your own, because a Selection Prompt is just a snippet whose body is an instruction with a {{selection}} token in it.

This works in Mail, Slack, Notes, Word, your code editor and any web page, not only in a browser. There is more detail on the AI text transforms page.

Prompt Chains: several steps, one trigger

Some edits are never one step. You translate, then you shorten. You explain, then you turn it into bullets.

Prompt Chains let one trigger run several snippets in order, with each step's output feeding the next. Chains can start from your current selection, from your clipboard, or from nothing at all. There is a built-in tester so you can paste sample text and watch each step's output before you rely on it.

Quick Look for Markdown

Select any .md file in Finder and press space. You get the rendered document with syntax-highlighted code blocks instead of raw Markdown. It works on every Markdown file on your Mac, not only files TypeFire created. It is free, and there is a page about it if you want the detail.

Two-way iCloud sync

Sync used to be a one-way backup. In 3.0 it is genuinely two-way between your Macs, with the newest edit winning and deletions propagating correctly in both directions.

Text clips can sync too, behind a separate switch that is off by default. Images and files stay on the Mac that captured them, by design.

The AI in TypeFire is yours

TypeFire has no AI middleman and no markup on tokens.

Everything else that changed since 2.1

• One overlay, two tabs. The Spotlight-style launcher and Quick Paste are now a single surface. Press ⌃ ⌘ ⇧ T for snippets, ⌃ ⌘ ⇧ V for clips, and switch between them in place.
• Snippet type icons in the list, so you can tell an expansion from a Selection Prompt from a Chain at a glance. Switchable off in Settings.
• A rebuilt first run. Onboarding now explains all three snippet types with worked examples, then seeds a starter library so the app is useful before you have written anything.
• 8 interface languages, fully translated.
• Faster and calmer. Network calls no longer block the interface, so the window stays responsive while AI requests and updates are in flight.

Free or Pro: what you actually get

TypeFire's free tier is deliberately generous, and it is not a trial. Full detail is on the pricing page.

Free, forever, with no counters: unlimited snippets, unlimited abbreviations, all dynamic tokens, AI tokens with your own key or an on-device model, rich text and Markdown snippets, fill-in placeholders, JavaScript and AppleScript snippets, the Spotlight launcher, two-way iCloud sync, Quick Look, imports from TextExpander, aText, Alfred, Espanso, CSV and JSON, and 8 languages.

Pro is exactly three things:

1. Unlimited clips. The free clipboard keeps your 10 most recent, with every feature available.
2. Selection Prompts.
3. Prompt Chains.

$18, once. Not a subscription. Every future Pro feature is included. There is a 7-day trial with no card required, and it starts by itself.

When a trial ends, nothing is deleted without an explicit warning and a one-click export. Chains and Selection Prompts stay visible but stop running.

Upgrading from TypeFire 2.x or 1.x

Nothing you have breaks.

• Your snippets open unchanged. Snippets are plain Markdown files in a folder you chose, and 3.0 reads every earlier format, including files from 1.x. Titles, abbreviations, collections, use counts, favourites and rich text all carry across.
• Your files are not rewritten when you upgrade. TypeFire only changes a snippet file when you edit and save that snippet.
• Every existing snippet becomes a Text Expansion, which is what it already was. You can convert any of them to a Selection Prompt or a Chain later, or never.
• Your abbreviations, shortcuts, collections and settings all carry over, and you stay signed in.
• You get the 7-day Pro trial so you can try Clyp, Selection Prompts and Chains before deciding.

The one change worth knowing: the simple clipboard history in 2.x is now Clyp. After the trial, the free tier keeps your 10 most recent clips. Everything else you were using stays free and uncapped.

Privacy, in specifics

• Snippets are plain Markdown files in a folder you pick. You can read them with any editor, back them up any way you like, and leave whenever you want.
• The clipboard database is encrypted with SQLCipher, keyed from your macOS Keychain. Image and file blobs sit alongside it with owner-only permissions.
• Passwords are never captured, by convention rather than by guesswork.
• OCR runs on your Mac.
• There is no TypeFire server in the path of your snippets or your clips.

Two honest caveats, because they matter more than the marketing line. Snippets synced through iCloud are stored as plain Markdown in your iCloud Drive and protected by your Apple account rather than by TypeFire's own encryption, and iCloud Drive is not end-to-end encrypted unless you have turned on Advanced Data Protection. And if you choose a cloud AI provider, your text goes to that provider under your own API key.

Frequently asked questions

Get TypeFire 3.0

Existing users are offered the update automatically inside the app. New users can download it and start the 7-day Pro trial without a card. If you are setting it up for the first time, the getting started guide walks through the four steps and the two shortcuts worth learning.