How to clear your clipboard on Mac
Whether you just copied a password or want to wipe your clipboard history, here's how to clear it — and, better, how to keep sensitive things out of it in the first place.
Clear the current clipboard
The system clipboard holds one item, so the quickest way to clear it is to overwrite it:
- Copy something harmless — select a single space or a random character and press ⌘C.
- Whatever was there is now replaced.
Prefer the terminal? Run pbcopy < /dev/null to empty the clipboard.
Clear your clipboard history
The built-in Spotlight history clears itself after a short time. If you use a clipboard manager, clearing is explicit and instant — in Copydrop you can delete any single item, or clear the whole history, from the panel. Your history is a local database, so deleting really deletes.
Better: keep sensitive things out entirely
Clearing after the fact is a patch. The real fix is to never record sensitive content:
- Password managers are ignored by default. Copydrop respects the standard concealed-content flag, so anything copied from your password manager never enters the history.
- Exclude any app with one click. Add your banking app, a secrets tool, anything — its copies are skipped.
- Nothing leaves your Mac. No account, no telemetry — your clipboard data never travels. What you clear is gone, not synced somewhere.
Why this matters: a clipboard quietly holds some of the most sensitive text you handle. Architecture that excludes passwords by default beats remembering to clear.
More about clearing the clipboard
Does clearing the clipboard also remove it from history?
They're two different things. Overwriting the current clipboard (copying a space) only changes the single active item. Your clipboard-manager history is separate — in Copydrop you delete a single item or clear the whole history explicitly from the panel, and because it's a local database, deleting really deletes.
How do I stop sensitive data being saved at all?
Prevention beats cleanup: Copydrop never records content from password managers (it honors the concealed-content flag), and you can exclude any app — a banking site, a secrets tool — so its copies are skipped entirely.
Does Terminal pbcopy < /dev/null clear the manager's history?
No — that only empties the live system clipboard. A manager's stored history is cleared from within the app, which is the right place since that's where retention lives.
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Related: see clipboard history · pay-once managers · best clipboard managers