TurboClipboard docs

Every feature, with real screenshots.

Onboarding for each platform, then a compact reference for Mac, iPhone, iPad, the keyboard, Share Extension, sync, and privacy — each control paired with the exact Settings → … path to find it.

Overview

One clipboard, four surfaces.

Mac is the capture and automation hub. iPhone and iPad browse synced text and smart folders. The keyboard saves and pastes where you type, and the Share Extension saves from other apps.

macOS command palette showing clipboard History with category badges and a pinned strip
History — summon with Option-Space.
macOS command palette showing the saved Library scope
Library — saved clips, pins, and tags.
Command-K action panel listing every action for a clip
The ⌘K action panel.
Template fill sheet with live preview on macOS
Templates fill in with a live preview.

Quick start

Start with the surface you’ll use first.

Turn on the Mac palette first, add the iOS keyboard so you can save and paste without leaving the app you’re in, and enable sync once iCloud Keychain is healthy on every device.

Mac

5 min

First five minutes on Mac

Start here if you copy from desktop apps all day.

  1. 1 Launch TurboClipboard — the palette opens with a quick Welcome Tour.
  2. 2 Press Option-Space from any app to summon it. Copy something, reopen, and search for the new row.
  3. 3 Select a row and press Return to paste it straight into the app you were using.
  4. 4 Hold Command to reveal 1–9 keycaps, then press a digit to paste that row instantly.
  5. 5 Press Command-K on a row for every action, and Control-1 / Control-2 to switch History and Library.
  6. 6 Save clips to Library, add tags, then turn a useful search into a smart folder.
TurboClipboard command palette on macOS with searchable history and saved clips

iPhone

5 min

First five minutes on iPhone

Synced text clips, templates, and smart folders in your pocket.

  1. 1 Open TurboClipboard and pick History or Library from the tab bar.
  2. 2 Search up top, then tap a row to copy it. Category badges and summaries appear automatically.
  3. 3 Tap + to create a clip or template; use Add Variable for placeholders like {{name}}.
  4. 4 Tap a template, fill the prompts, and copy the rendered result.
  5. 5 Open Settings to confirm sync, appearance, and cache controls.
TurboClipboard iPhone Library with pinned clips and recently used rows

iPad

5 min

First five minutes on iPad

A real sidebar layout for browsing and editing larger libraries.

  1. 1 Open in full screen or regular width to get the sidebar layout.
  2. 2 Use the sidebar to switch Library and History; row counts show beside each.
  3. 3 With a hardware keyboard, press Command-1 for Library, Command-2 for History, and Command-comma for Settings.
  4. 4 Search, fill templates, and browse smart folders exactly like iPhone — with a pointer hover effect on rows.
TurboClipboard on iPad with a Library and History sidebar

iOS keyboard

3 min

Save and paste without leaving the app

Best for repeated text inside Messages, Mail, and work apps.

  1. 1 In Apple Settings, go to General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard and add TurboClipboard.
  2. 2 Open its keyboard settings and allow Full Access so it can open your encrypted library to save and paste clips.
  3. 3 In any text field, switch keyboards, search, and tap a clip or template to insert it.
  4. 4 To save instead: tap Clipboard to keep what you just copied, or select text in the field and tap Selection.
  5. 5 For templates, fill each variable inline, then insert the finished result.
TurboClipboard custom keyboard pasting a saved clip inside Messages

Share Extension

2 min

Save from other apps

Capture useful text or links from Safari, Mail, and Notes.

  1. 1 Open the system Share sheet from Safari, Notes, Mail, or another app.
  2. 2 Choose TurboClipboard.
  3. 3 Text and URLs are saved to the encrypted Library. Anything that looks like a secret is blocked automatically.
  4. 4 Open the main app later to push extension changes when sync is on.
TurboClipboard iOS Share Extension saving a link to the Library

Sync

5–10 min

Connect your devices

Do this after each app works locally.

  1. 1 Sign in to the same Apple Account on each device, with iCloud Keychain and iCloud Drive on.
  2. 2 On Mac: Settings → Sync → “Sync Across My Apple Devices.”
  3. 3 On iPhone/iPad: Settings → Sync, then turn sync on.
  4. 4 Reopen the app on each device; mobile applies synced changes on the next launch.
  5. 5 Mac images stay local unless you opt one in from its row menu. Files, app objects, and sensitive clips never sync.
TurboClipboard iOS sync status showing encrypted iCloud sync

Mac essentials

A command palette for your clipboard.

Summon TurboClipboard from anywhere, search, preview, and act — all from the keyboard.

History and Library

History is the automatic recent feed. Library holds clips you explicitly save, pin, tag, and reorder.

Control-1Control-2

Reject duplicates

Repeat copies of the same text or image reuse the existing row instead of piling up. On by default.

Settings Capture & History Clipboard History

Resizable, placeable palette

Drag to resize; the palette remembers its size and opens Centered, At pointer, or where you left it.

Settings Palette Window

Pinned-clips strip

Pin favorites into a strip above results, and step through them with the arrow keys.

Density and appearance

Fit more with Compact rows; match the system with Light, Dark, or Auto in General → Appearance.

Settings Palette Appearance

Preview and Open

Preview long text, images, PDFs, and files without touching the clipboard. Open runs the row’s action.

Command-YCommand-O

Pasting & quick paste

Get text into the app you were using.

Direct paste and quick paste remove the extra Command-V most clipboard managers still need.

Direct paste

Return drops the clip straight into the app you were using — no manual Command-V.

Return

Choose your primary action

Decide whether Return pastes or copies. Option-Return always runs the other one.

Settings Pasting Primary Action

Paste as plain text

Strip formatting for one paste without changing your default behavior.

Shift-Return

Quick paste 1–9

Hold Command to reveal number keycaps over the first nine rows, then press a digit.

Command-1 … 9

Per-app plain text

Force plain-text paste in specific apps like editors and terminals.

Settings Pasting Always Paste as Plain Text

Action panel

Every action for a clip, searchable with ⌘K.

You don’t need to memorize shortcuts — Command-K lists everything for the selected clip.

Open the action panel

Command-K opens a searchable list of every action for the selected clip — no shortcuts to memorize.

Command-K

Paste variants

Paste, Copy, or Paste as Plain Text right from the panel.

Search “paste” or “plain text.”

Preview, open, speak

Reach Preview, the smart Open action, and read-aloud Speak Text from one list.

Search “preview,” “open,” or “speak.”

Save, pin, delete, clear

Save to Library, pin to the strip, delete a row, or clear all of History or Library.

Clearing History can be undone.

Organize

Tags, smart folders, and merges.

Tags and smart folders

Tag clips singly or in bulk, combine with tag:work tag:invoice, then save a search as a smart folder that syncs to every device.

Command-T

Inline edit and reorder

Edit text rows in place. Drag Library rows into a manual order when no filter is active.

Double-click

Merge selected clips

Multi-select related rows and combine them into one clean result, copied or saved.

Command-MShift-Command-M

Templates

Reusable text, without retyping.

Turn frequently reused text into fillable forms with built-in helper variables and a live preview.

Variables and helpers

Templates are clips with {{variables}}. Built-ins include {{date}}, {{time}}, {{clipboard}}, {{uuid}}, and more.

Save template text to Library.

Fill on copy

Copy a template and TurboClipboard opens a fill form with a live preview for any missing variables.

Return

Wrap a variable while typing

Select text as you compose and wrap it into a {{variable}} without leaving the field.

Command-Shift-K
Template fill sheet with live preview on macOS
Fill variables with a live preview, then Copy Filled.

Transform & intelligence

Clean up, rewrite, and search by meaning.

Deterministic transforms and on-device AI steps run entirely on your Mac — no cloud model, no account.

16 built-in transforms

Casing, whitespace, sort/unique lines, URL encode/decode, JSON pretty/minify, and Base64 — from any row.

Command-K → a transform action.

Transform pipelines

Chain steps into named commands like Slugify, with a live preview and an optional global shortcut.

Settings Pasting Transform Pipelines

On-device AI steps

Add Proofread, Summarize, Key Points, or rewrite steps that run through Apple Intelligence on your Mac.

Settings Pasting Transform Pipelines

Semantic search

When keyword matches run short, meaning-based matches from an on-device model fill the rest. Nothing is uploaded.

Settings Palette Search

Smart actions

Detects URLs, JSON, colors, Base64, and IPs locally and offers the right action; hex/RGB render as swatches.

Command-O

Transform on paste

Apply a chosen transform automatically every time you paste.

Settings Pasting

Rich capture

Images, files, and objects — private by default.

Private-by-default rich capture

Keeps images, file references, RTF/HTML, and app-object snapshots. Images stay on this Mac until you opt one in.

Copy content while history is on.

Per-row sync scope

Mark any text row device-only, or opt an image into encrypted sync after a storage confirmation.

Row menu → Keep on This Device / Allow Sync.

On-device OCR and file text

Text in images, PDFs, and text-like files is indexed locally with Apple Vision and PDFKit so you can search it.

Copy or import supported files.

Import, export, and backups

Import TextExpander, Alfred, Raycast, plain text, and Maccy; export an encrypted or plain backup.

Settings Advanced Data

Shortcuts actions

Save, copy, transform, merge, search Library/History, apply a pipeline, or render a template from the Shortcuts app.

Search “TurboClipboard” in Shortcuts.

Sensitive clips

Codes and secrets protect themselves.

Sensitive content is recognized the moment you copy it: concealed on screen, kept off sync, and optionally deleted on a timer.

Settings Privacy & Security Sensitive Clips

What gets flagged

One-time codes, API keys, JWTs, private keys, bearer tokens, bcrypt hashes, and password-manager copies — detected on-device.

Concealed until you hover

Flagged rows show a masked placeholder and reveal only while you hover, then re-conceal.

Kept device-only

Sensitive clips never sync, even when iCloud sync is on for everything else.

Optional auto-expiry

Delete one-time codes after 30 seconds and secrets after 60, with a live countdown.

Respects pasteboard standards

Honors the nspasteboard.org concealed and transient types set by good password and OTP apps.

Hidden from screen capture

The palette never appears in macOS screen recordings or shares, so contents can’t leak on a call.

Settings reference

A sidebar for every setting, plus search.

The Settings window is a resizable sidebar with nine sections. Type in its search to jump to a control, and watch for the synced-vs-this-Mac badge.

Settings General

Appearance (System / Light / Dark), launch at login, and Dock vs. menu-bar-only.

Settings Palette

Startup scope, window placement and size, density, fuzzy + semantic search, max results, and copy sound.

Settings Capture & History

Automatic history, retention and limits, duplicate rejection, source apps, pause, and clear-on-quit/sleep/lock.

Settings Pasting

Primary action, transform on paste, transform pipelines, and per-app plain-text rules.

Settings Privacy & Security

Sensitive-clip detection, concealment and auto-expiry, password-manager and per-app exclusions.

Settings Intelligence

Smart Categories, Smart Actions, and Local Summarization toggles, with on-device availability notes.

Settings Sync

The “Sync Across My Apple Devices” toggle, encryption details, image guidance, status, and recovery.

Settings Shortcuts

Customize the palette hotkey and review the full fixed-shortcut reference.

Settings Advanced

Clear recent history, encrypted and plain backups, migration importers, and statistics.

Mac shortcuts

Full keyboard reference.

Option-Space

Open or close the palette (customizable in Settings → Shortcuts).

Escape

Close the palette, or the action panel if it is open.

Control-1 / Control-2

Search History or Library.

Up / Down

Move the selected row.

Left / Right

Move between chips in the Pinned strip.

Return

Paste (or copy) the selected clip into the previous app.

Option-Return

Run the other action — paste if Return copies, or copy if Return pastes.

Shift-Return

Paste the selected clip as plain text.

Command-1 … 9

Hold Command for keycaps, then press a digit to paste that row.

Command-Return

Save typed text to Library.

Control-Return

Save typed text to History.

Command-K

Open the action panel, or clear History / Library with no selection.

Command-Y / Command-O

Preview the clip, or open its action, URL, file, or image.

Command-Delete

Delete the selected clip (press twice to confirm).

Command-click

Toggle multi-select.

Command-M / Shift-Command-M

Copy or save selected rows as one merged clip.

Command-T

Bulk-add a tag to selected Library clips.

Command-Shift-K

Wrap the selection as a {{template variable}} while composing.

Tab

Autocomplete a search match, or jump past a variable you just wrapped.

iPhone & iPad

Browse synced text, anywhere.

The mobile app focuses on browsing synced clips and smart folders, filling templates, and running Shortcuts.

iPhone History with on-device category badges and source apps
iPhone Library with a pinned strip and recently used clips
Filling a template on iPhone with a live preview
Custom keyboard pasting a clip inside Messages
iPad Library with a Library and History sidebar
iPad Settings showing the encrypted sync toggle

History

Synced recent text with category badges and summaries. Tap to copy, swipe to save or delete, pull to refresh.

Settings History

Library

Saved clips, a pinned strip, recently used, templates, and smart folders synced from Mac.

Settings Library

Add clips and templates

The + button creates a clip; Add Variable inserts placeholders like {{name}}.

Tap + in History or Library.

Fill templates in the app

Custom variables open a fill sheet with a live preview that keeps empty placeholders visible.

Tap a template row, then Copy.

On-device categories & summaries

iPhone and iPad categorize and summarize locally at capture, just like Mac.

Settings Intelligence

Shortcuts & automation

App Intents cover save, copy, transform, search, render a template, and Apply Transform Pipeline.

Search in the Shortcuts app.

Appearance

System, Light, or Dark, using adaptive colors so the app and keyboard stay readable.

Settings Appearance

Local cache recovery

If rows look stale after a sync reset, clear only the device cache; synced rows repopulate from iCloud.

Settings Clear Local Cache

Keyboard, Share & iPad

Paste and capture beyond the app.

Custom Keyboard

Paste synced clips and fill templates inside another app. It runs locally and never logs keystrokes.

Apple Settings General Keyboard Keyboards

Save from the keyboard

Tap Clipboard to keep what you just copied, or select text in the field and tap Selection. Anything that looks like a secret is refused.

The two pills under the keyboard’s search field.

Keyboard template filling

Templates open an inline fill mode — type values, use the clipboard, preview, then insert.

Tap a template inside the keyboard.

Share Extension

Saves text and URLs from other apps to Library, blocking anything that looks like a secret.

System Share sheet → TurboClipboard.

iPad layout & hardware keyboard

A real sidebar, Command-1/2 to switch scopes, Command-comma for Settings, and pointer hover on rows.

Open on iPad in regular width or full screen.

Accessibility & sync recovery

Honors Reduce Motion, and “Use Without Sync” lets a device continue locally if it is stuck waiting on the key.

Reduce Motion follows iOS Accessibility.

Privacy & intelligence

Auto-Exclude Detected Secrets blocks risky shares; Smart Categories and Summarization mirror the Mac.

Settings Privacy

Sync & privacy

What syncs, what stays local.

Sync is off until you turn it on. Everything is encrypted on your device before it syncs, and the key is shared privately between your Apple devices through iCloud Keychain.

Settings Sync Read the privacy policy
Can sync

Syncable text History

Recent text rows sync when sync is on and the row is not sensitive or device-only.

Can sync

Saved Library clips

Saved clips, templates, tags, pins, and usage metadata can sync.

Can sync

Smart folders

Saved searches and tag filters sync and browse on Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Settings

Settings

Privacy preferences, retention, transforms, app exclusions, and intelligence toggles sync.

Can sync

Sensitive clips

One-time codes, detected secrets, and password-manager copies are always device-only.

Local-only

Mac images

Local by default; opt in per image after confirming the extra iCloud storage.

Local-only

Mac file references

File captures are pointers to files on that Mac; the files are never uploaded.

Local-only

App object captures

Best-effort app-specific snapshots stay on the Mac that captured them.

Local-only

Imported history

History imported from other apps stays local; imported snippets can sync.

Local-only

OCR & extracted text

Text pulled from local images, PDFs, and files is stored in the encrypted row for local search.

Can sync

Semantic search index

Computed on-device at query time; no vectors are stored or uploaded, and the toggle is per-device.

Troubleshooting

Common questions before contacting support.

Sync Where do I turn on iCloud sync?

Mac: Settings → Sync → “Sync Across My Apple Devices.” iPhone/iPad: Settings → Sync. Do it on every device on the same Apple Account, with iCloud Keychain and iCloud Drive enabled.

Keyboard The iOS keyboard says Full Access is needed

Enable Full Access for the TurboClipboard Keyboard in Apple Settings. It lets the keyboard open your library so it can show your clips and save new ones; nothing is sent to Epistates, and keystrokes are never logged.

Keyboard The keyboard’s Clipboard button is greyed out

That means iOS reports nothing copyable on the clipboard right now. Copy some text, then switch back — TurboClipboard checks only whether text exists, never what it says, until you tap.

Keyboard iOS asked “Allow Paste?” in the keyboard

That is the system paste prompt, and it appears only when you tap Clipboard. TurboClipboard never reads your clipboard on its own — not when the keyboard opens, and not while you type. Saving your Selection instead needs no prompt at all.

Local-only A copied image is not on another device

Images stay on the capturing Mac by default. Open the image’s row menu, allow sync, and confirm the storage warning. The other device must support synced image rows.

Open A one-time code disappeared from History

That is sensitive-clip protection. Codes and secrets can auto-expire (30s for codes, 60s for secrets) if you enabled it in Settings → Privacy & Security, and they never sync.

Open Return copies instead of pasting (or vice versa)

Check Settings → Pasting → Primary Action. Option-Return always runs whichever action is not primary.

Sync Sync is slow on first setup

Confirm the same Apple Account, iCloud Keychain, and iCloud Drive. Open the app on each device and give CloudKit time to deliver the rows and shared key.

Sync Sync reports an authentication failure

Confirm iCloud Keychain is healthy and reopen the app. Reset Sync is a last resort — it erases your synced data, local history, and the encryption key, so every device starts fresh.

Privacy A secret was not saved

Auto-Exclude Detected Secrets is on by default for Mac capture and the iOS Share Extension. Turn it off in Settings only if you deliberately want secrets in history.

Open The palette shows up in a screen recording

It should not — the palette window is excluded from recordings and shares by default. Confirm you are on the current version.