How can I help?

Press ⇧⌘V anywhere, or click the clipboard icon in the menu bar and choose Show Clipboard. You can change the shortcut in Settings › General. xcv lives in the menu bar and has no Dock icon.

Yes. The island springs from the top centre of the screen and stays out of sight until you call it. You can also have it slide in from the top, bottom, left or right edge in Settings › General › Slide out from.

Turn on Start at login in Settings › General. It's off until you turn it on. If macOS asks you to approve it, go to System Settings › General › Login Items.

Choose Welcome Tour… from the menu bar icon, or click Show Welcome Tour in Settings › About.

Select it and press Return (or double-click it). xcv copies the card, closes the island and puts you back in the app you were using; press ⌘V to paste. ⌘↩ copies as plain text, and ⌘1–⌘9 pick one of the first nine cards. You can also drag a card straight into another app.

Yes. Turn on Paste directly into the active app in Settings › General, then allow xcv in System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility. After that, picking a card pastes it straight into the app you were using. xcv uses this permission only to press ⌘V and never to read your screen or other apps.

If pasting still only copies, turn xcv off and on again in the Accessibility list (macOS sometimes needs this after an update). Some secure fields, like password fields, ignore pasted keystrokes by design.

On macOS 15.4 and later, the system asks before an app reads the clipboard in the background. Choose Always Allow so your history stays complete. You can change this later in System Settings › Privacy & Security.

Only on your Mac, in xcv's app container: ~/Library/Containers/com.rymcol.xcv. That's xcv's private storage, not a folder for your documents: to keep an image or snippet as a file, right-click its card, choose Save Image… or Save as Text File… and pick where it goes. xcv has no network access, so it can't upload or sync anything.

Anything a password manager marks as concealed is skipped automatically. To exclude a whole app, open Settings › Privacy › Excluded apps and choose Add running app…, or type its bundle identifier. To stop recording for a while, press the pause button in the island or choose Pause Capturing from the menu bar (⌘T in the menu).

Delete a single card with ⌫. Choose Clear History… in the menu bar to remove everything except pinned items. Settings › General controls how long items are kept and how many are kept.

1. Quit xcv from the menu bar icon.
2. Move xcv from Applications to the Trash.
3. In Finder, choose Go › Go to Folder…, enter ~/Library/Containers/com.rymcol.xcv and move that folder to the Trash.

That's everything. xcv never stored anything anywhere else.

Every feature, with no time limit and no account or sign-up. It shows your newest 25 items and allows up to 3 pins.

They're hidden, not deleted. Your normal history settings still apply, and when you unlock, everything that's still within those settings comes back.

Choose Unlock xcv… from the menu bar icon or from Settings › About, and confirm the one-time purchase with the App Store: $9.99 in the US, or the App Store's equivalent in your currency. It isn't a subscription.

Sign in to the same Apple Account in the App Store, then choose Restore Purchases in xcv's Unlock window. Nothing to type, no licence key.

Purchases are handled by Apple, so refunds are too. Request one at reportaproblem.apple.com.