Developer tools decision
Supaste
A competent macOS developer can build a useful replacement in a few weeks using native APIs and existing open-source clipboard apps as precedents; the vendor’s polish and support are what you’d give up.
Visit website↗Built by Solt Wagner, who ships 7 products in this index
Not priced
No pricing page we fetched carried a figure, so there is nothing to compare against. The build side is still real.
$100one-off120 h to build
$0/mo3 h/mo upkeep
No published price to break even against.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Supaste alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Capture clipboard events, store them locally with metadata and thumbnails, index text and OCRed image text, present a global quick-paste UI with search and shortcuts, and paste or drag items back into apps.
What it still won’t have
- Polished vendor UX, visual design, and animation polish
- Built-in commercial support and 14-day refund handling
- Tight notch/integration polish shown on product pages
- Ongoing paid maintenance and updates bundled with a commercial release
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
No published price
Supaste does not publish a price we could read, so there is nothing to compare against. What building costs is below.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
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What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a native macOS clipboard manager using Swift + SwiftUI, CoreData (or SQLite) for local storage, Vision framework for image OCR, and CloudKit for optional iCloud sync. Core features in scope: global clipboard capture (text, images, files), local persistence with metadata and thumbnails, full-text search (including OCRed image text), a menu-bar / quick-paste UI with global hotkeys, inline text-replacement shortcuts, tagging/categories, export/import, and settings. Out of scope: Windows/Linux builds, commercial store checkout, and elaborate animations. Deliver error handling for failing OCR/CloudKit sync, unit tests for storage and search, and UI integration tests for the quick-paste flow.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 4 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score67
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 4
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productSupaste — Clipboard History Manager for Mac
- official pricingSupaste pricing and purchase details
- open sourcep0deje/Maccy
- open sourcehluk/CopyQ
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
