Why Copycat? A hotkey junkie shares his story on building the Mac clipboard manager that completely changed how he works

Obsessed with productivity

In my twenties, I was a young, hungry software engineer and entrepreneur — obsessed with productivity.

My thesis then hasn't changed since: the more time your hands stay on the keyboard instead of reaching for the mouse, the faster your work gets done. I chased that idea down every angle I could find — hotkeys, keyboard shortcuts, macros, scripts. If it kept my hands on the keys, I built it into my workflow.

There was one gap I couldn't script my way out of: I kept losing the last thing I copied. Enough to break my flow state entirely, hunting for a code snippet, a docs block, a hash key I knew I'd copied minutes earlier.

Nothing built the way I wanted

In 2016 there were already a few clipboard managers around. None of them were built around simplicity, speed of use, and squeezing every bit of value out of a hotkey.

I was an iOS engineer, and macOS development felt like an easy segue. So I built it myself.

Copycat was born.

Ten years, still reaching for it every day

It has been 10 years now, and I still reach for Copycat every single day. Dozens of friends and family use it too, and they keep telling me how much it's changed the way they work.

Why not just use something else?

Eventually I asked myself why I was still using something I built for myself a decade earlier. So I went looking — I tried the competitors. They were feature-rich: every media type, iCloud sync across every device.

I didn't want any of that. I wanted something true to the core Apple product philosophy: do one thing better than anyone else. Speed. Productivity. Hotkeys. Local-only, secure and private handling of everything I copy.

A ground-up rebuild for 2026

By 2026 it was time for a facelift. Not a refactor — a complete rebuild from the ground up on the latest Mac technologies, while staying true to the spirit of the original and the things that made it worth building in the first place.

Copycat 2.0

Copycat 2.0 is here. You don't need to be a developer to use it — just someone who values keeping their hands on the keyboard. Every recent clip is one hotkey away from ⌘1–⌘9, and search as you type finds anything further back. Select a clip, it's copied, then press ⌘V. No more mentally managing your copy/paste buffer, and no more losing the one thing you just copied.

Copycat 2.0 launches on the Mac App Store October 20, 2026 for $3.99, one time — no subscription.

Happy copying

I still catch myself smiling at what this little app has done for my own workflow over the years. If you have ideas on how to make it better, I'd love to hear them.

Happy copying!

— Kyle