How to edit clipboard items on a Mac before pasting

What macOS gives you natively, and where it stops

By default, macOS only remembers your most recent copy, and it offers no way to change it before pasting. macOS 26 (Tahoe) added a clipboard history you can open from Spotlight, but it is view-and-paste only: no editing, no cropping, no trimming, and it clears entries after a short window.

To edit what you copied before you paste it, you need a clipboard manager with a built-in editor.

How to edit clipboard items before pasting in Drobu

1. 1

   Open your clipboard history

   Press Cmd+Shift+V to open Drobu's floating panel from any app. Your recent copies appear newest first, and you can type to search by content.

2. 2

   Select the item you want to change

   Use the arrow keys or click to select the text, screenshot, GIF, or screen recording you copied. A preview appears on the right side of the panel.

3. 3

   Open it in the editor

   Press the Right arrow (Cmd+Right) to open the item. Text opens an inline editor, images and screenshots open the crop overlay, and GIFs and screen recordings open the trim timeline.

4. 4

   Make your edit

   For text, retype it or use Clean to strip formatting and unwrap terminal output. For images and screenshots, drag the corner handles to crop to the part you want. For GIFs and recordings, drag the start and end handles to trim. The original stays untouched in your history.

5. 5

   Save the edit

   Press Cmd+Return to save, or Escape to discard. The item in your history updates to the edited version.

6. 6

   Paste the edited item

   Press Return to paste the edited item into whichever app was active when you opened Drobu. The panel closes and the content lands at your cursor.

Crop a screenshot before you paste it

This is the most common case. Take a screenshot the normal way, open Drobu, select it, and press the Right arrow to open the crop overlay. Drag the corner handles to keep just the part you need, save with Cmd+Return, and paste. You never open a separate editor, and the full screenshot stays in your history in case you need it again.

Trim a GIF or screen recording before you paste it

Record a region of your screen straight into Drobu, or paste in a GIF you already have. Open it, and the trim timeline appears. Drag the start and end handles to cut it down to the moment that matters, then paste the trimmed clip into Slack, a GitHub issue, or a doc. No exports, no files to clean up afterward.

Clean up copied text before you paste it

Copied text often arrives with hard line breaks, stray formatting, or terminal color codes. Open the text item, edit it inline, or use Clean to strip formatting and unwrap wrapped output, then paste the tidy version. The original is preserved, so you can always go back.

What other tools can and cannot edit

Most clipboard managers stop at storing and recalling what you copied. Raycast's clipboard history can edit text, links, and colors, but not images, GIFs, or recordings. Paste supports text edits and basic image tweaks. Maccy is intentionally minimal and does not edit at all. Cropping a screenshot already in your history, trimming a GIF in place, or trimming a screen recording before pasting is what Drobu is built for.