Clip — Your content toolkit, in the menu bar.

clip — v1.3.0

# Markdown to HTML
$ echo "# Hello **world**" | clip md2html
<h1>Hello <strong>world</strong></h1>

# Unicode styling for social media
$ echo "**bold** and _italic_" | clip md2social
𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝 and 𝒊𝒕𝒎𝒐𝒊𝒌

# Back up your entire vault
$ clip export --file ~/Dropbox/clip-backup.json
Exported 42 assets to ~/Dropbox/clip-backup.json

Everything you need, one panel away

Four tabs. No Dock icon. Always accessible from your menu bar.

🗂

Asset Vault

Drag images and text in from anywhere. Organise into folders. Recursive deep search finds assets at any depth.

⇄

Smart Transform

Paste anything — auto-detects Markdown, HTML, CSV, TSV. Open .md files from disk. Side-by-side split view.

𝐀

Text Formatter

Unicode bold, italic, monospace, script, small caps. Convert full Markdown to social-media-ready styled text.

Asset Vault

Your content, always one drag away

Drop images, text snippets, and files into the vault from Finder, browsers, or any app. Organise with nested folders. Search instantly. Drag assets back out to your presentation or document.

✓ Drag & drop from any app
✓ Nested folder organisation
✓ Grid or compact list view
✓ Deep recursive search across all folders
✓ Persistent JSON storage — survives restarts

~/Library/Application Support/Clip/

├── assets.json 42 items

├── 📁 Screenshots/

│ ├── hero-banner.png

│ └── logo-dark.svg

├── 📁 Blog Posts/

│ └── draft-intro.md

└── 📋 Clipboard History (12)

Input (auto-detected: TSV)

Item Price Qty
Apple $1.00 5
Banana $0.50 10

Output (Markdown table)

| Item | Price | Qty |
|------|-------|-----|
| Apple | $1.00 | 5 |
| Banana | $0.50 | 10 |

⇄ Split view · Auto-detect · Copy · Drag RTF

Smart Transform

Paste anything. Open any .md file.

Clip auto-detects what you pasted and shows the right conversions. Open Markdown files from disk with the file picker. Toggle split view to compare input and output side by side.

✓ Open .md files from disk with rendered preview
✓ Markdown → HTML with live preview
✓ TSV/CSV ↔ Markdown tables
✓ Drag rendered preview as RTF into any app
✓ Import .md into vault with MD badge & preview action

Text Formatter

Unicode styling. No special apps needed.

Style text with Unicode characters that work on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook — anywhere plain text is accepted. Two modes: Format (toolbar actions) and Convert (full document transforms).

✓ 8 styles: bold, italic, monospace, script, small caps…
✓ MD → Unicode: full document conversion
✓ Bullet lists, numbered lists, separators
✓ One-click revert to plain ASCII

Input:

**Launching today!**
Check out our _new features_.

↓

Output (MD → Unicode):

𝓛𝓪𝓾𝓷𝓬𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓸𝓭𝓪𝓲!
Check out our 𝒊𝒎𝒖 𝒏𝒎𝒎𝒕𝒖𝒋𝒎𝒔.

💾

Export / Import

Back up your vault as JSON. Restore on any Mac. GUI dialogs or CLI for scripting and cron jobs.

clip export --file ~/backup.json
clip import --file ~/backup.json

🔄

Sparkle Auto-Update

Powered by the Sparkle framework. Checks for updates on launch, verifies EdDSA signatures, downloads and installs in the background.

Update available: v1.4.1 → Install & Relaunch

🎨

SVG & PNG

Copy SVG text assets to clipboard or drag to design tools. Paste any image as PNG from screenshots, Preview, or other apps.

Copy as SVG Paste PNG Drag SVG

Up and running in 60 seconds

Five steps from download to your first transform.

1

Download the DMG

Grab Clip-1.4.0.dmg from the latest GitHub release. The DMG contains the app, the CLI binary, and an installer script.

Download latest release →

2

Install the app

Open the DMG and drag Clip.app to /Applications.

3

Bypass Gatekeeper

The app isn't notarized yet. Run this once in Terminal to remove the quarantine flag:

$ xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Clip.app

4

Launch Clip

Double-click Clip.app. A paperclip icon appears in your menu bar. Left-click to open the panel. Right-click for the menu (theme, clipboard history, export/import, updates).

5

Install the CLI (optional)

Double-click "Install CLI.command" inside the DMG. This copies the clip binary to /usr/local/bin.

$ clip md2html --clipboard # transform clipboard in-place

⚡

Quick access: Press ⌘+Shift+C from any app, or shake your mouse to reveal the panel instantly.

Questions & Answers

Is Clip free?

Yes. Clip is free and open source under the MIT license. No accounts, no telemetry, no ads. The full source code is on GitHub.

Why does macOS block the app?

Clip isn't signed with an Apple Developer certificate (notarization costs $99/year). macOS Gatekeeper quarantines unsigned apps by default. Running xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Clip.app removes the flag safely. The app contains no network calls except the optional update checker to GitHub.

Where is my data stored?

Everything is stored locally in ~/Library/Application Support/Clip/ as plain JSON files. No cloud, no sync, no external services. Use clip export to create portable backups.

Can I sync across multiple Macs?

There's no built-in sync yet, but you can use export/import with a shared folder. Schedule a cron job to auto-export to Dropbox or iCloud Drive:
0 2 * * * clip export --file ~/Dropbox/clip-backup.json

What are Clip's dependencies?

One: Sparkle for auto-updates (bundled in the app). Everything else is pure Swift + AppKit + SwiftUI + WebKit. No Homebrew, no Node, no CocoaPods.

How do I access Clip quickly?

Three ways: 1) Click the paperclip icon in your menu bar. 2) Press ⌘+Shift+C from any app. 3) Shake your mouse vigorously — the panel pops up instantly.