Cupola vs Maccy: clipboard history, compared honestly

If you only want a clipboard manager, Maccy and Cupola aren't really even odds: Maccy is free, open source, and does one thing: clipboard history. Cupola is a $20 app that puts your Apple Calendar, Reminders and Notes in the notch, with clipboard history as one of five tabs, not the whole product. So the honest framing is this: if clipboard history is the entire job you need done, Maccy is hard to beat on price and simplicity. If you also want your calendar, reminders and notes a hover away in the notch, Cupola's clipboard tab comes bundled with that, for a one-time fee.

What each app actually is

Maccy is a lightweight, free, open-source clipboard manager for macOS, maintained on GitHub under the MIT license. It lives in the menu bar, keeps a history of what you copy, and lets you search and reuse it with keyboard-first shortcuts (⇧⌘C to open, type to search, Return to copy, ⌥Return to paste). It can pin frequently used items, ignore specific apps or clipboard data types (including common password-manager types by default), and pause clipboard monitoring entirely. There's no account, no subscription, and no bundled calendar or notes features: it's a focused utility.

Cupola is a native Mac app that puts your real Apple Calendar, Reminders and Notes, plus a clipboard tab and a Focus timer, in the MacBook notch (five tabs total), and opens into a full app window when you want more room. Its Clipboard tab remembers what you copy, text, links, images and files, while Cupola runs, keeping your newest 500 clips plus anything you pin, stored only on your Mac. Passwords from password managers are skipped automatically. You can filter by kind (All, Pinned, Text, Links), search, edit a text clip or type a new one, pin clips into your own order, and select several clips at once to copy together, pin, unpin or delete them in one action. It's a single $20 purchase with a 7-day free trial and a 14-day refund window.

Feature comparison

Figures above are as of October 2026.

Where Maccy is the better choice

If clipboard history is the only thing you're shopping for, Maccy is genuinely excellent: it's free, open source, keyboard-driven, and has nothing else competing for the same menu-bar real estate. Because the code is public, you (or anyone) can audit exactly what it does with your clipboard data, which matters if you're privacy-conscious about a tool that, by nature, sees everything you copy. It's also lighter: there's no calendar engine or notes sync running alongside it, just the one job, done well.

Where Cupola is the better choice

Cupola is the better pick if clipboard history is one of several things you want solved at once. You get the same core clipboard behaviors, pin, search, filter, edit, multi-select, skip passwords, plus your real Apple Calendar, Reminders and Notes, all a hover away in the notch instead of scattered across separate apps and menu-bar icons. If you're already paying for or using other Apple-first tools and just want less app-switching, Cupola's $20 one-time price covers clipboard plus three more surfaces Maccy doesn't touch at all.

Verdict

Pick Maccy if you want a free, open-source, clipboard-only tool and nothing more. Pick Cupola if you want that same kind of clipboard history (pin, search, skip passwords) bundled with your Apple Calendar, Reminders, Notes and a Focus timer in the notch, for a one-time $20. Try Cupola free for 7 days at /#get.

Sources

• Cupola: cupola-landing/index.html (Clipboard Spotlight section, pricing, trial, refund, requirements), /tmp/cupola-seo/changelog.json (v1.13.0 "Clipboard history, in the app and the notch", v1.13.1 multi-select)
• Maccy GitHub repository and README: github.com/p0deje/Maccy (features, MIT license, macOS Sonoma 14+ requirement, shortcuts, ignore rules, Homebrew install)