Documentation
// learn how to use FZClip
Quick Start
FZClip runs in your menu bar and can be accessed anytime:
- Click the FZClip icon in the menu bar, or press the show/hide shortcut you picked during onboarding (set or change it any time in Settings → Keyboard)
- Start typing to search your clipboard history
- Press Return to select and auto-paste the item
FZClip monitors your clipboard automatically. Just copy anything and it's saved instantly.
Views
FZClip organizes your content into five specialized views. Click the tabs at the top to switch, or assign Next / Previous View shortcuts in Settings → Keyboard.
Clipboard
Your real-time clipboard history with powerful fuzzy search. Everything you copy is saved here automatically.
Favorites
Bookmark frequently used items for quick access. Assign a Toggle Favorite shortcut in Settings → Keyboard to flip items in and out of Favorites without leaving the keyboard.
Images
Visual content with optional OCR text extraction. When OCR is enabled, you can search images by their text content.
Notes
Create and store custom text notes. Perfect for code snippets, templates, or any text you use frequently. Assign a Create Note shortcut in Settings → Keyboard for one-press note creation.
Terminal
Shell command history captured from Terminal or iTerm. This view requires accessibility permissions to be enabled in System Settings.
Key Features
Fuzzy Search
Find items with partial matches and substrings. Type "cmd" to find "command" or "git push" to find any item containing both words. The search is fast and flexible.
FZClip also supports fzf-style syntax for advanced queries:
'exact— Exact match (items must contain "exact")^prefix— Starts with "prefix"suffix$— Ends with "suffix"!exclude— Exclude items containing "exclude"^start !skip end$— Combine multiple patterns
Auto-Paste
When enabled in settings, selecting an item automatically pastes it into the active application. No extra steps needed.
Sensitive Content Blur
FZClip can automatically blur content copied from password managers — 1Password, LastPass, and Bitwarden are detected out of the box. Tweak the list under Settings → Privacy → Manage Blurred Apps to add browsers or other apps you want covered.
Image OCR
Extracts text from copied images using macOS Vision framework. This enables searching through screenshots and images by their text content.
Data Persistence
Your clipboard history survives app restarts and system reboots. You can also export/import your data for backups or migration.
Settings
Open settings with ⌘ , or from the menu bar icon. Settings are organized into seven tabs.
General
- Launch at login — Start FZClip automatically when you log in
- Auto-paste on select — Automatically paste when selecting an item
- Preserve last view — Remember which view you were on when reopening
- Follow active screen — Show window on the same screen as the active application
- Search result sorting — Choose how search results are ordered
- Search query history — Press ↑ in the search field to recall previous searches
Appearance
- Theme — Choose Light, Dark, or follow system appearance
- Glass opacity — Adjust the transparency of the glass effect
- Tint color — Customize the window background tint
- Highlight color — Choose the selection highlight color
- Highlight matching text — Highlight search query matches in results
- Show item details — Display content length and timestamps
- Show total items count — Display total number of items in the footer
- Hide dock icon — Run as a pure menu-bar app
Views
- Enable / disable views — Show or hide Favorites, Images, Notes, and Terminal in the tab bar (Clipboard is always shown)
- Enable OCR — Toggle text extraction from images
Keyboard
Record key combinations for the customizable in-app actions and the global show/hide hotkey. See Keyboard Shortcuts for the full list.
Privacy
- Accessibility — Status of the accessibility permission. Required for the global hotkey, clipboard monitoring, and auto-paste
- Blur sensitive content — Automatically blur content from password managers
- Manage Blurred Apps — Pick exactly which apps should trigger the blur
Storage
- Limit history size — Cap the number of items kept. Only newly added items are trimmed — your existing history is never deleted
- Export All / Import — Back up or restore clipboard history, notes, and terminal favorites in one bundle
- Restore Backup — Restore from the internal automatic backup (created in the background; no settings to configure)
- Fix Corrupted — Run a repair pass on the history file when something looks off
- Export History Only — Legacy clipboard-history-only export
- Clear Items — Permanently remove items (favorites are always preserved)
- Open in Finder — Show FZClip's storage folder
- Shell History File — Point FZClip at your shell history file to power the Terminal view
About
- Automatic update checks — Check for new releases in the background
- Automatically download updates — Fetch new builds when they appear
- Beta updates — Opt in to beta builds in addition to stable releases
Keyboard Shortcuts
FZClip ships without preset shortcuts for in-app actions — pick whatever fits your muscle memory in Settings → Keyboard. A handful of navigation keys are always active when the window is focused; those are listed in the second table and cannot be remapped.
Customizable shortcuts
Open Settings → Keyboard and record a key combination for any action below. Until you record one, the action has no shortcut (it still works through clicks, menus, and the search field).
| Action | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Show / Hide Window | Not set | Global hotkey — works from any app. Picked during onboarding; can be changed or cleared in Settings → Keyboard. |
| Toggle Favorite | Not set | Toggles the highlighted item between Clipboard and Favorites. |
| Edit Item | Not set | Opens the inline editor for the highlighted item. |
| Create Note | Not set | Adds a new empty note in the Notes view. |
| Hide Sensitive Content | Not set | Blurs / unblurs the highlighted item (also auto-applied to items copied from password managers). |
| Image Preview | Not set | Opens a larger preview of the highlighted image. |
| Next View | Not set | Cycles to the next visible view (skips views you disabled). |
| Previous View | Not set | Cycles to the previous visible view. |
Built-in shortcuts
These work whenever the FZClip window is focused and are not configurable.
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Select & auto-paste highlighted item | Return or ⌘ Return |
| Move highlight up / down | ↑ ↓ |
| Switch view (left / right) | ← → |
| Delete highlighted item | ⌫ or ⌘ ⌫ |
| Close window / exit edit mode | Esc |
| Save when editing an item | ⌘ S |
| Open Settings | ⌘ , |