A CopyQ alternative
that feels like a Mac app
Free text expander, clipboard manager and markdown notes. $18 once for unlimited clips, notes sync and AI prompts.
Why people move from CopyQ
The specific reasons people give for switching.
It is not a native Mac app
CopyQ is a Qt application that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux from one codebase. That is exactly why it is so capable, and also why menus, shortcuts and window behaviour feel a step removed from the rest of your Mac.
Configuration is the price of power
CopyQ can do almost anything through commands and scripting, once you have written it. TypeFire does less, and does it without a configuration session first.
No OCR on your screenshots
CopyQ keeps images. It does not read the words inside them. TypeFire runs on-device text recognition over every image at capture, so a screenshot is findable by a word it contains.
No text expansion
CopyQ pastes what you copied. Abbreviations that expand into full text as you type, in every Mac app, are a different job and one CopyQ does not do.
No AI on clips
Summarise a thread you copied, rewrite it, or translate it, with Apple Intelligence or a local model so it can stay on your machine.
TypeFire compared with CopyQ
Prices and capabilities as of August 2026.
| TypeFire | CopyQ | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0, then $18 once for unlimited | Free, open source |
| Clip limit on free | 10 most recent | Unlimited |
| Native Mac app | Yes, Swift and Rust | No, Qt cross-platform |
| Runs on Windows and Linux | No, Chrome extension only | Yes |
| Scripting | Snippets run JS and AppleScript | Yes, extensive command scripting |
| OCR search inside images | Yes, on-device, free tier | No |
| Text expander | Yes, unlimited, free | No |
| AI actions on clips | Yes, free tier | No |
| Encrypted storage | Yes, SQLCipher | Optional, via config |
| Open source | No | Yes |
CopyQ details from its public repository, August 2026. Both apps keep clipboard history locally.
Where CopyQ is genuinely better
Three things CopyQ does better. If any of them is your deciding factor, use CopyQ.
Cross-platform, genuinely
The same clipboard manager, the same configuration, on macOS, Windows and Linux. If you move between operating systems daily, nothing TypeFire offers replaces that, and our Chrome extension only covers browser text.
Scripting depth
CopyQ's command system can filter, transform, tag and act on clips automatically in ways TypeFire cannot. For anyone willing to invest the setup time, it is more programmable than we are.
Free, unlimited and open source
No cap, no cost, and you can read exactly what it does. That is a strong combination and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What TypeFire adds
Not available in CopyQ at any price.
It behaves like a Mac app
Native Swift and Rust, no bundled runtime, standard Mac keyboard behaviour, and an overlay that appears at your cursor rather than a separate window you switch to.
Screenshots you can search
On-device text recognition reads every image you copy. Search a word you saw in a screenshot and the screenshot comes back. Offline, free, no provider involved.
A text expander in the same app
Unlimited abbreviations expanding in every native Mac app and every website, with rich text, Markdown, dynamic tokens and fill-in placeholders.
Working defaults
Clips, search, OCR, filters and retention are configured out of the box. There is no command language to learn before the app is useful.
The clip-to-snippet loop
Promote any clip into a permanent snippet with an abbreviation, which is the one thing a pure clipboard manager structurally cannot do.
Turn anything you copy into something you type
Right-click a clip, choose Save as snippet, give it an abbreviation. The thing you copied once becomes something you type three characters to get, forever. The same conversions run across all three surfaces: a clip becomes a note, and a note you keep rewriting becomes a snippet. Clipboard managers have no snippet engine, text expanders do not watch your clipboard, and no note app has either, which is why the loop only closes here.
- 01
Copy something
It lands in Clips alongside everything else you copied today.
- 02
Save as snippet
It leaves your rolling history and enters your permanent library.
- 03
Give it a trigger
Type
invfrom then on and never look it up again.
A clipboard manager you can tell what to ignore
A clipboard manager sees everything you copy. Until 4.0 the only control over that was a password-manager exclusion you could not see. There are three now, none of them gated, and the limits of the strongest one are stated rather than buried.
Turn image capture off
One switch. Text keeps being captured and pictures stop. Images you have already saved are kept rather than deleted, which is not what most people expect a privacy toggle to do, so it is worth saying.
Name apps to skip
Add any application and TypeFire ignores what you copy in it. Choose from the apps it has already seen, with clip counts, or browse to any app on your Mac. Each app gets one of three settings: allow it, block images only, or block everything you copy there. The middle one is what most people want for a work tool, keeping the text and losing the screenshots.
The password managers, now visible
TypeFire has always ignored password managers. That list is in Settings now, twenty-three apps including 1Password, Bitwarden, KeePassXC, Dashlane and Apple Passwords, blocked by bundle ID in code rather than by a setting you have to find. It shows which of them you have installed, and any one can be overridden.
Encrypted database, owner-only files
Clips are stored in an encrypted SQLite database on your Mac. The key is generated on your machine and kept in the macOS Keychain. Image files sit alongside the database with owner-only permissions.
Secrets expire in minutes
Card numbers and high-entropy strings are detected and deleted after five minutes by default, adjustable in Settings. Everything else follows the retention you choose.
An on-device AI option
Apple Intelligence and local models through Ollama or LM Studio run entirely on your machine. If you pick Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini instead, text goes to that provider directly; TypeFire operates no server in that path.
Where blocking by app stops being a guarantee
macOS does not tell an application which other application wrote to the clipboard. TypeFire matches on the app that was in front at the time, plus any app that identifies itself using the standard convention. That covers the overwhelming majority of real cases and it is not absolute. The protection that does not depend on a guess is the concealed-content marker: password managers mark what they copy, and TypeFire never stores it whatever else is set.
The app list also covers what you copy, not screenshots you save as a file. A PNG on your desktop records nothing about what was on screen, so TypeFire matches those to an app where it can and skips them when it does. It is right in the ordinary case and it is not a promise: to keep saved screenshots out entirely, turn off Save screenshots to Clips.
Eighteen dollars. Once.
TypeFire Pro is a single payment that unlocks unlimited clips, Selection Prompts, Prompt Chains, notes sync and note version history. There is no subscription and no per-seat pricing.
Free tier, then one payment
No free tier at all
One time
No free tier
One time
Lifetime, or $3.99/mo
Subscription, forever
CopyQ is free, cross-platform and highly scriptable. TypeFire is native, free at 10 clips, and $18 once for unlimited.
Moving from CopyQ
Still not answered?
No. TypeFire is a native Mac app, and the free Chrome extension covers browser-based expansion on any operating system including Windows, Linux and ChromeOS.
The clipboard manager is Mac only. If you need the same clipboard history across macOS, Windows and Linux, CopyQ does that and TypeFire does not.
For a native Mac experience, for screenshots you can search by their contents, and for the text expander in the same app.
CopyQ is more programmable and completely free, so if you value scripting depth over Mac-native feel, staying is reasonable.
Partly, and differently. TypeFire snippets can run JavaScript or AppleScript and paste what they return, prompt chains run several AI steps from one trigger, and retention rules run automatically by age, count or disk budget.
What it does not have is CopyQ's general-purpose command language operating on the clipboard itself.
In TypeFire, yes by default. Clips are stored in a SQLCipher-encrypted database keyed from your macOS Keychain, readable only by your user account, with image and file blobs alongside it at owner-only permissions.
Content that password managers mark as confidential is never captured at all.
Mac-native, and free to start
A clipboard manager that behaves like a Mac app, with searchable screenshots and an uncapped text expander. $18 once for unlimited clips.
Free text expander, clipboard manager and markdown notes. $18 once for unlimited clips, notes sync and AI prompts.
⌃⌘⇧V your clips⌃⌘⇧T your snippets