Clipboard Management

Store, organize, and retrieve clipboard content.

Supported Content Types

mahpastes handles these content types:

Type	Examples	How It's Displayed
Images	PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP, BMP, TIFF, SVG	Thumbnail preview
Text	Plain text, notes	Text preview (first 500 characters)
Code	Any programming language	Monospace text preview
JSON	API responses, configs	Formatted JSON preview
HTML	Web page snippets	HTML source preview
Files	Any file type	Filename with type icon

Adding Clips

Paste from Clipboard

The main way to add content:

1. Copy something to your system clipboard (from any app)
2. Focus the mahpastes window
3. Press Cmd/Ctrl + V

mahpastes detects the content type and stores it.

Drag and Drop

Drop files directly into the app:

1. Select one or more files in Finder/Explorer
2. Drag them onto the mahpastes window
3. Release to import

Supported drop types:

• Single files
• Multiple files at once

Expiration

Set per-clip expiration when uploading (dropdown in the bottom bar) or on existing clips via the context menu. See Auto-Delete for details.

Viewing Clips

Gallery View

Clips display in a grid:

• Large thumbnails for images
• Text previews for text-based content
• Metadata showing filename, type, and timestamp

Lightbox

Click any image clip's preview to open it in a full-screen lightbox.

Navigation:

• Arrow keys or arrow buttons to move between images
• Swipe left/right on trackpad or touchscreen
• Trackpad horizontal scroll with momentum detection

Zoom and pan:

• Slider in the bottom bar (1x to 4x)
• Trackpad pinch to zoom
• Touch pinch to zoom
• Double-click to reset zoom to 1x
• Click and drag to pan when zoomed in

Bottom bar:

• Position counter (e.g. "1/5"), filename, and image resolution
• Zoom slider with percentage display
• Actions menu with Open, Open With, Copy (Path / File / Contents), Save, Edit, Tags, Metadata, Rename, Set Expiration / Cancel Expiration, Merge Duplicates (if duplicates exist), Archive, Delete
• Plugin action menu (if plugins define lightbox actions)

Keyboard shortcuts:

Shortcut	Action
Esc	Close lightbox (closes open menus first)
Arrow Left	Previous image
Arrow Right	Next image
Cmd/Ctrl + C	Copy image contents to clipboard

Opening Content

• Images: Click the preview to open in the lightbox
• Text/Code/JSON/HTML: Click the preview to open in the text editor

Content Detection

mahpastes categorizes content by MIME type:

text/plain     → Plain text editor
text/html      → HTML source view
application/json → Formatted JSON view
image/*        → Image viewer/editor

Retrieving Clips

Context Menu

Click the three-dot menu button on any clip card, or right-click anywhere on the card, to open the context menu. The menu uses submenus to group related actions. Available actions:

• Open -- opens the clip with the system default application
• Open With -- opens a file dialog to choose an application
• Copy (submenu) -- expands to show Path, File, and Contents
  • Path -- creates a temporary file and copies the absolute path to clipboard
  • File -- copies the clip as a file to the system clipboard (macOS via NSPasteboard, Windows via PowerShell; not supported on Linux)
  • Contents -- copies raw text or image data to the system clipboard (available for text/*, application/json, and image/* types; non-PNG images are converted to PNG before copying)
• Save -- opens a native save dialog to export the clip to disk
• Edit -- opens the image editor or text editor (shown for editable types)
• Tags -- opens the tag popover
• Metadata -- opens the metadata modal for viewing and editing key-value pairs
• Rename -- opens a prompt to change the clip's filename
• Set Expiration -- opens expiration preset popover (shown when clip has no expiry)
• Cancel Expiration -- removes expiration (shown when clip has an active expiry)
• Archive / Restore -- toggles archive state
• Merge Duplicates -- merges duplicate clips (shown when duplicates exist)
• Delete -- deletes the clip after confirmation

If plugins define card actions, they appear in a Plugins submenu below a divider.

Temporary Files

Files created via "Copy Path" are stored in a temp directory and cleaned up periodically (60-minute lease) and when mahpastes exits. Don't rely on them for permanent storage.

Organizing Clips

Search

Filter clips by filename and content type:

• Type in the search bar to filter
• Search is case-insensitive substring matching against the filename and MIME type
• Results update as you type
• Press Enter to move focus to the first visible result
• Filters only the currently visible cards (does not search clip contents)
• Works in both the main gallery and archive views (whichever is active)

Archive

Move important clips to a separate space:

1. Click the menu button (three dots) on a clip
2. Select Archive
3. The clip moves to the Archive view
4. Access archived clips via the Archive button

Archived clips:

• Don't appear in the main gallery
• Can be unarchived at any time

warning

Archiving does not remove expiration. If a clip has an auto-delete timer, it will still expire even when archived.

Delete

Remove clips you no longer need:

1. Click the menu button (three dots) on a clip
2. Select Delete
3. Confirm the deletion

Deleted clips are permanently removed from the database.

Content Type Details

Images

Supported formats:

• PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF
• WebP, BMP, TIFF
• SVG (displayed as image)

When pasting from clipboard, images are typically captured as PNG.

Text Content

mahpastes distinguishes between:

• Plain text: Regular text content
• HTML: Content whose trimmed body starts with <!DOCTYPE html (case-sensitive prefix match)
• JSON: Any string that parses as valid JSON

Detection runs at upload time when the incoming content type is text/plain or empty. Files uploaded with an explicit non-text content type keep their original type.

Binary Files

For non-text files:

• Stored as binary blobs
• Displayed with appropriate icons
• Full file preserved for export

Sorting

Control the order of clips in the gallery using the sort popover in the bottom bar.

Sort Field	Description
Date added	Creation timestamp (default, newest first)
Filename	Alphabetical by filename
File size	Clip data size in bytes
Content type	MIME type string

Click the active sort field to toggle between ascending and descending. Click a different field to switch to it (defaults to descending). The sort preference (field and direction) is persisted to the settings table and restored on app launch. A secondary tiebreaker of created_at + id keeps the order stable when two clips share the same value for the primary sort field.

Limits and Performance

• Clip limit: 50 clips displayed in gallery (database has no limit)
• File size: No hard limit, but very large files may slow performance
• Preview size: Text previews limited to 500 characters

For large collections, use search and archive to keep the main gallery manageable.

Related

• Drag and Drop -- drag clips out of the app
• Bulk Actions -- operate on multiple clips at once
• Tags -- organize clips with color-coded labels
• Image Editor -- annotate images
• Text Editor -- edit text clips
• Metadata -- attach key-value pairs to clips