v1.6.0 · macOS 14+ · Swift 5.9
Clip

Clip

Your content toolkit, in the menu bar.

Manage assets, transform Markdown, format text for social media. Menu bar app + CLI. Zero dependencies.

Download for Mac View Source
clip — v1.6.0 
# Markdown to HTML
$ echo "# Hello **world**" | clip md2html
<h1>Hello <strong>world</strong></h1>

# Unicode styling for social media
$ echo "**bold** and _italic_" | clip md2social
𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝 and 𝒊𝒕𝒎𝒐𝒊𝒌

# Back up your entire vault
$ clip export --file ~/Dropbox/clip-backup.json
Exported 42 assets to ~/Dropbox/clip-backup.json

Everything you need, one panel away

Six tabs. No Dock icon. Always one click away from your menu bar.

🗂

Asset Vault

Drag images and text in from anywhere. Organise into folders. Recursive deep search finds assets at any depth.

⇄

Smart Transform

Paste anything — auto-detects Markdown, HTML, CSV, TSV. Open .md files from disk. Side-by-side split view.

𝐀

Text Formatter

Unicode bold, italic, monospace, script, small caps. Convert full Markdown to social-media-ready styled text.

✏️

Daily Notes

Built-in markdown editor with keyword expansion, inline styling, and preview. Float alongside any app with ⌥A.

📖

Markdown Reader

Open .md files and folders with live reload. Highlight text, attach review notes, and export the file with your instructions inlined — ready to paste into any AI agent.

±

Diff Checker

Side-by-side compare with line numbers and smart word/character highlighting. Review exactly what an AI changed in your draft before accepting it.

Asset Vault

Your content, always one drag away

Drop images, text snippets, and files into the vault from Finder, browsers, or any app. Organise with nested folders. Search instantly. Drag assets back out to your presentation or document.

  • ✓ Drag & drop from any app
  • ✓ Nested folder organisation
  • ✓ Grid or compact list view
  • ✓ Deep recursive search across all folders
  • ✓ Persistent JSON storage — survives restarts
~/Library/Application Support/Clip/
├── assets.json   42 items
├── 📁 Screenshots/
│   ├── hero-banner.png
│   └── logo-dark.svg
├── 📁 Blog Posts/
│   └── draft-intro.md
└── 📋 Clipboard History (12)
Input (auto-detected: TSV)
Item Price Qty
Apple $1.00 5
Banana $0.50 10
Output (Markdown table)
| Item | Price | Qty |
|------|-------|-----|
| Apple | $1.00 | 5 |
| Banana | $0.50 | 10 |
⇄ Split view · Auto-detect · Copy · Drag RTF
Smart Transform

Paste anything. Open any .md file.

Clip auto-detects what you pasted and shows the right conversions. Open Markdown files from disk with the file picker. Toggle split view to compare input and output side by side.

  • ✓ Open .md files from disk with rendered preview
  • ✓ Markdown → HTML with live preview
  • ✓ TSV/CSV ↔ Markdown tables
  • ✓ Drag rendered preview as RTF into any app
  • ✓ Import .md into vault with MD badge & preview action
Text Formatter

Unicode styling. No special apps needed.

Style text with Unicode characters that work on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook — anywhere plain text is accepted. Two modes: Format (toolbar actions) and Convert (full document transforms).

  • ✓ 8 styles: bold, italic, monospace, script, small caps…
  • ✓ MD → Unicode: full document conversion
  • ✓ Bullet lists, numbered lists, separators
  • ✓ One-click revert to plain ASCII
Input:
**Launching today!**
Check out our _new features_.
↓
Output (MD → Unicode):
𝓛𝓪𝓾𝓷𝓬𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓸𝓭𝓪𝓲!
Check out our 𝒊𝒎𝒖 𝒏𝒎𝒎𝒕𝒖𝒋𝒎𝒔.
New in v1.5

A notebook that travels with your tools.

The Notes tab is a daily markdown journal built into the panel. It auto-creates a note for today, expands keywords into templates, and previews rendered markdown inline. Press ⌥A to pop the note into a floating window alongside any app.

  • ✓ Auto-creates a "today" note on first open
  • ✓ Keyword expansion: ::meeting ::proposal ::table
  • ✓ Inline bold, italic, headings, code, blockquotes
  • ✓ Floating panel (⌥A) for distraction-free writing
  • ✓ Send to Transform, copy to clipboard, export as .md
notes / 2026-04-26.md
# Sunday, April 26
::meeting → expands template ↵
**Clip v1.5 shipped** today
Notes tab works ✓
[ ] write HN post
[ ] deploy landing page
Preview Send to Transform Export .md
📎

Compact Titlebar

Tab icons sit inline with the traffic lights in a 30px bar. Hover any icon for a tooltip. Theme cycle and pin-to-top live in the same row.

🔨

Bundled CLI

The clip binary ships inside the app. On first launch Clip prompts to install it — or use Menu bar → Install CLI… any time.

👁️

Quick Look

.clip vault files preview directly in Finder via Quick Look — see your assets without opening the app.

💾

Export / Import

Back up your vault as JSON. Restore on any Mac. GUI dialogs or CLI for scripting and cron jobs.

clip export --file ~/backup.json
clip import --file ~/backup.json
🔄

Sparkle Auto-Update

Powered by the Sparkle framework. Checks for updates on launch, verifies EdDSA signatures, downloads and installs in the background.

Update available: v1.4.1  →  Install & Relaunch
🎨

SVG & PNG

Copy SVG text assets to clipboard or drag to design tools. Paste any image as PNG from screenshots, Preview, or other apps.

Copy as SVG Paste PNG Drag SVG

Up and running in 60 seconds

Five steps from download to your first transform.

1

Download the DMG

Grab Clip-1.6.0.dmg from the latest GitHub release. The DMG contains the app, the CLI binary, and an installer script.

Download latest release →
2

Install the app

Open the DMG and drag Clip.app to /Applications.

3

Bypass Gatekeeper

The app isn't notarized yet. Run this once in Terminal to remove the quarantine flag:

$ xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Clip.app
4

Launch Clip

Double-click Clip.app. A paperclip icon appears in your menu bar. Left-click to open the panel. Right-click for the menu (theme, clipboard history, export/import, updates).

5

Install the CLI (optional)

On first launch Clip prompts to install the clip binary to /usr/local/bin. You can also trigger it later via Menu bar → Install CLI…

$ clip md2html --clipboard   # transform clipboard in-place
⚡
Quick access: Press ⌘+Shift+C from any app, or shake your mouse to reveal the panel instantly.

Questions & Answers

Is Clip free?
Yes. Clip is free and open source under the MIT license. No accounts, no telemetry, no ads. The full source code is on GitHub.
Why does macOS block the app?
Clip isn't signed with an Apple Developer certificate (notarization costs $99/year). macOS Gatekeeper quarantines unsigned apps by default. Running xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Clip.app removes the flag safely. The app contains no network calls except the optional update checker to GitHub.
Where is my data stored?
Everything is stored locally in ~/Library/Application Support/Clip/ as plain JSON files. No cloud, no sync, no external services. Use clip export to create portable backups.
Can I sync across multiple Macs?
There's no built-in sync yet, but you can use export/import with a shared folder. Schedule a cron job to auto-export to Dropbox or iCloud Drive:
0 2 * * * clip export --file ~/Dropbox/clip-backup.json
What are Clip's dependencies?
One: Sparkle for auto-updates (bundled in the app). Everything else is pure Swift + AppKit + SwiftUI + WebKit. No Homebrew, no Node, no CocoaPods.
How do I access Clip quickly?
Three ways: 1) Click the paperclip icon in your menu bar. 2) Press ⌘+Shift+C from any app. 3) Shake your mouse vigorously — the panel pops up instantly.
How do I send my document feedback to an AI agent?
Open a Markdown file in Clip's Reader tab, select any text, and attach a note ("make this shorter", "add a source here"). Copy the section or whole file: Clip outputs the source unchanged with each note inlined as an instruction callout, ready to paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or any agent. The agent's revision can then be checked in the Diff tab. Notes are stored in a sidecar file; your original .md is never modified. Also available headless: clip comments export file.md.
How does the Diff tab decide what to highlight?
The default Smart mode picks per line pair: character-level marks for typo-size edits, word-level marks when lines share enough words, and whole-line tinting when a line was rewritten. You can force Line, Word, or Char precision from the picker. Both panes get line numbers, change counts, and one-click copy.
Does Unicode styling work with Vietnamese text?
Yes, two ways. Accent mode (default) styles every letter and re-attaches tone marks over the styled glyphs, so “mắt” becomes fully bold instead of half-styled. Natural mode (the VN toggle) keeps words with tone marks plain and styles only ASCII tokens like AI, 247, or #hashtags — the safest rendering across platforms and fonts. Reverting always restores the exact original text.