CopyClean
Help & User Guide

Everything CopyClean does, explained.

CopyClean is a macOS menu-bar app that watches your clipboard and cleans every copy on your Mac. This guide walks through getting started, the menu-bar icon, cleaning modes, hotkeys, per-app rules, exactly what gets cleaned, and how to fix the rare cases where it does not do what you expect.

Last updated: June 2, 2026 · For CopyClean on macOS 14 (Sonoma) and later

01What CopyClean is and how it works

CopyClean is a small menu-bar utility for macOS that cleans your clipboard. It lives in the menu bar at the top of your screen, with no Dock icon and no window in the way. When it is active, it watches the clipboard and, the instant you copy text, replaces what you copied with a cleaned version. When you paste, you paste clean text.

It removes invisible Unicode and AI watermark characters, normalizes the typographic "tells" of AI and autocorrect text back to plain ASCII, and strips tracking parameters out of links. All of this happens locally, in memory, on your Mac. Nothing you copy is uploaded.

Under the hood, CopyClean checks the clipboard about twice a second. When it sees a new copy, it reads the text, decides what kind of content it is (plain text, a URL, a file path, or code), cleans it according to your settings, and writes the cleaned result back to the clipboard. The whole pass takes well under a millisecond for ordinary text, and CopyClean ignores its own writes so it never loops on itself.

Because it works at the clipboard level, it works in every app: your browser, your notes app, chat, email, design tools, anywhere you paste. There is no website to visit, no shortcut that stops working inside a particular editor, and no manual cleanup step.

02Getting started

Install from the Mac App Store

CopyClean is distributed only through the Mac App Store, so it is signed, sandboxed, and updated automatically. Search for CopyClean on the Mac App Store, or open the listing, and choose Get to install. It requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.

Download on theMac App Store

The 7-day free trial

CopyClean comes with a 7-day free trial. During the trial every feature is available, so you can decide whether it fits the way you work. When the trial ends, cleaning pauses until you unlock the app with a one-time purchase. Your settings are kept through the whole process. See Trial, purchase and refunds for the details.

First launch

When you open CopyClean it adds its sparkle icon to the menu bar and starts cleaning right away in the default Standard mode with automatic cleaning. There is no setup wizard and no account to create. If you do not see the icon, it may have been hidden by a crowded menu bar. Look for the sparkle near the right side of the menu bar, and see Troubleshooting if it is missing.

Launch at login

Open Settings from the menu and turn on Launch at login so CopyClean is always running and cleaning the moment you start your Mac. This uses the standard macOS login-item service, so you can also manage it from System Settings under General, Login Items.

No special permissions needed

CopyClean does not need Accessibility access or any special permission to clean your clipboard. Reading and writing its own clipboard is inherent to any sandboxed Mac app. The one optional permission is read-only access to a file you choose yourself in an open panel, and it is used only by the per-app rules setting to pick an application. There is no account and no sign-in.

03The menu-bar icon

The CopyClean icon is a small sparkle in your menu bar. It is both a status light and a quick control. Left-click toggles cleaning on or off; right-click (or Control-click) opens the menu with every setting and action.

The icon also reacts to what just happened, so you get feedback without opening anything:

  • On vs off. A filled, highlighted sparkle means CopyClean is ON and cleaning. A dimmed sparkle means it is OFF.
  • Sparkle and count. When CopyClean cleans a copy, the icon plays a brief sparkle animation, so you can see at a glance that it caught something.
  • Warning pulse. If CopyClean is OFF but it detects hidden characters in what you just copied, the icon pulses a warning. It is telling you "there is invisible junk in here, but I am switched off." Turn it on, or use Clean clipboard now, to remove it.
  • Checkmark. When CopyClean is ON and the text you copied was already clean, it briefly shows a checkmark. Nothing needed removing.

Right-click the menu-bar icon to open the menu. From top to bottom:

CopyClean is ON / OFF
The master switch. Click it (or left-click the icon) to pause or resume cleaning. When OFF, CopyClean still watches the clipboard so it can warn you about hidden characters, but it does not change anything.
Mode
A submenu to pick the cleaning strength: Off, Light, Standard, Sterile, or Custom. A checkmark shows the active mode. See Cleaning modes.
Restore Original
Puts the last text CopyClean cleaned back on the clipboard, exactly as you copied it. A one-step undo for the most recent clean. See Restore Original.
Code Detection
When checked, CopyClean recognizes code you copy and leaves it alone apart from removing watermarks, so a zero-width space cannot break a build. On by default. See Code detection.
Simplify Typography
When checked, CopyClean rewrites AI and autocorrect typography back to ASCII (smart quotes, em dashes, styled letters, and more). On by default. The exact groups are configurable in Settings. See What it cleans.
Preserve Formatting
When checked, CopyClean keeps rich-text formatting such as bold and italic while still cleaning the underlying characters, rather than flattening to plain text. Off by default. See Preserve Formatting.
Clean clipboard now
Cleans whatever is on the clipboard right now, on demand. This is the manual action you use when the trigger is set to Manual, or any time you want to force a clean.
Cleaned: N characters
A running tally of how many characters CopyClean has removed or rewritten for you. Informational only.
Settings...
Opens the Settings window, where you configure typography groups, hidden-character groups, the trigger, hotkeys, per-app rules, URL cleaning, share-link expansion, and Launch at login.
License row
Shows your status and the action you can take. During the trial it reads Trial: N days left with an Unlock option to buy; once purchased it reads Full version. Restore Purchase re-checks your Apple ID if you have already bought CopyClean on another Mac.
Quit CopyClean
Quits the app. Cleaning stops until you open it again (or until the next login, if Launch at login is on).
The menu adapts to your settings, so an item may show a checkmark, the current mode, or your trial status rather than fixed text. The Settings window is the full control panel; the menu is the quick one.

05Cleaning modes in depth

The mode is the single dial for how hard CopyClean scrubs. Switch it from the Mode submenu, cycle it with a global hotkey, or assign different modes to different apps with per-app rules.

00
Off
Cleaning is paused. CopyClean still detects hidden characters and can flag them with the warning pulse, but it changes nothing on the clipboard.
01
Light
Removes invisible characters and strips URL tracking parameters only. It never touches your visible text, so quotes, dashes and letters are left exactly as typed. Good for when you only care about invisible junk and tracking.
02
Standard default
The recommended default. Removes invisible characters, applies the AI-typography cleanup that is on by default (smart quotes, em and en dashes, styled letters, bullets and arrows, ligatures, copyright and trademark symbols), and strips URL tracking. Deliberate semantic notation such as math, currency and Greek is left alone.
03
Sterile
The most aggressive mode. Reduces everything to plain ASCII, including the opt-in semantic groups (math, Greek, currency, fractions, roman numerals, super and subscripts, full-width and enclosed characters), and it even cleans text it would otherwise treat as code. Use when you want the plainest possible result.
04
Custom
You decide. Custom uses the individual switches in Settings, so you can keep currency and math while stripping only the AI tells, choose which hidden-character groups to remove, and turn URL cleaning or share-link expansion on or off. Toggling Code Detection or any group in the menu and Settings drives this mode.

06Trigger: automatic vs manual

The trigger decides when CopyClean cleans, independently of which mode is active. Set it in Settings.

Automatic default
CopyClean cleans every copy as it happens, in the background. Copy, then paste, and the text is already clean. This is what most people want.
Manual
CopyClean does not change anything until you ask it to. It still watches the clipboard and can warn you about hidden characters, but it only cleans when you press the Clean clipboard now hotkey or choose that item from the menu. Useful if you want full control over each clean.
If you have set the trigger to Manual and forgotten, CopyClean can look like it has stopped working. That is the first thing to check under Troubleshooting.

07Global hotkeys

CopyClean offers two global hotkeys that work from any app. No shortcut is assigned by default - you choose your own in Settings, so nothing conflicts with shortcuts you already use.

Cycle cleaning mode
Steps the active mode forward (Off, Light, Standard, Sterile, Custom and around again) without opening the menu. Handy for dropping to Off for a moment, then back.
Clean clipboard now
Cleans whatever is on the clipboard immediately. This is the hotkey you use most in Manual trigger mode, but it works in Automatic mode too.

To set them, open Settings, find the hotkey fields, click a field, and press the key combination you want (for example a combination using Command, Option, Control or Shift). To remove a shortcut, clear the field. Until you assign one, the matching menu item still works by click.

08Per-app rules

Per-app rules let you change how CopyClean behaves depending on which app is in front. The classic use is leaving your code editor untouched while everything else gets cleaned. Configure rules in Settings; you can:

  • Clean in all apps - the default. CopyClean treats every app the same.
  • Exclude specific apps - CopyClean cleans everywhere except the apps you list. Add your editor or terminal here to keep them hands-off.
  • Include specific apps only - CopyClean cleans only in the apps you list and ignores the rest.

You pick the application with a standard open panel (the one place CopyClean uses its read-only file permission). Combined with modes, this means you can effectively run a different cleaning strength per app, for example keeping a code-heavy app on a gentle setting while your writing apps run Standard.

09What it cleans, in detail

Invisible and hidden characters

These are the characters you cannot see but that travel with copied text: zero-width spaces, the Braille Pattern Blank and other AI watermarks, word joiners, byte-order marks, invisible tag characters, directional marks, and stray control codes. CopyClean recognizes the full range of Unicode control and format characters and removes the ones that do not belong, while preserving the ones your language needs (see Locale awareness).

You can fine-tune which groups get removed in Settings. The toggleable groups are:

Spaces
Unusual space characters (non-breaking, narrow no-break, thin, ideographic and similar) normalized to a regular space. on by default
Zero-width
Zero-width spaces and joiners that are invisible width. on by default
Directional
Left-to-right and right-to-left marks and embedding controls. on by default
Controls
Control characters other than the normal tab, line feed and carriage return. on by default
Watermarks
The Braille blank, word joiner, tag characters and other invisible markers used to fingerprint text. always removed
Watermarks are always removed, even inside code, because they have no legitimate use in normal text. The four groups above are the parts you can choose to keep, which matters mainly for specific scripts and edge cases.

AI typography tells (Simplify Typography)

AI and autocorrect leave a typographic fingerprint: curly quotes, long dashes, fancy bullets, and letters drawn from special Unicode blocks. Simplify Typography rewrites those back to plain, portable ASCII. The groups are individual switches in Settings, split into the ones that read as a machine tell (on by default) and the ones a person types on purpose (off by default, so deliberate notation survives).

On by default - the AI and autocorrect tells:

  • Dashes - em, en, figure and minus signs become a hyphen -.
  • Quotes - smart and low-9 quotes and primes become straight " and '.
  • Punctuation - the ellipsis becomes three dots, double and double-question marks become !! and ??.
  • Bullets and arrows - bullets become *, arrows become text like -> and <=.
  • Symbols - stars, checks, ballot boxes and decorative shapes become ASCII equivalents.
  • Ligatures - typographic ligatures such as fi and fl are split back into their letters.
  • Copyright, registered, trademark - the C-in-circle, R-in-circle, trademark, service-mark and sound-recording symbols.
  • Styled letters - the headline social and AI tell: bold, italic and fancy math-alphanumeric letters and digits become plain ASCII (for example a bold "b" or a double-struck letter becomes a normal one). Genuinely styled Greek is left alone.

Off by default - semantic notation a person types deliberately (opt-in):

  • Math - signs such as not-equal, less-or-equal, multiply, divide, plus-or-minus, square root and set membership.
  • Greek - the full Greek alphabet mapped to names. (Skipped entirely for the Greek locale, where Greek letters are ordinary text.)
  • Currency - symbols such as euro, pound, yen, rupee and bitcoin.
  • Fractions - one-half, one-quarter and similar precomposed fractions.
  • Roman numerals - the precomposed numeral characters, upper and lower case.
  • Super and subscripts - for example a squared digit becomes ^2 and a subscript becomes _9.
  • Section and units - the section and paragraph marks, numero, degree, micro, and degree Celsius and Fahrenheit.
  • Full-width - full-width Latin letters and digits become normal width. (Legitimate in CJK text, hence opt-in.)
  • Enclosed - circled numbers and letters and parenthesized forms become plain.
An AI does not sprinkle currency symbols or math operators as a tell, so by default CopyClean leaves them alone; rewriting them would corrupt what you meant. Turn a group on only if you specifically want those characters flattened. Sterile mode turns everything on at once.

URL tracking parameters and link rewrites

On by default, CopyClean cleans links you copy without breaking them. It strips tracking parameters such as utm_source, utm_medium, fbclid, gclid and the rest of a large, carefully maintained list, while leaving the real parameters a link needs to work. It only ever touches http and https links, never rewrites the host, and is built to be safe around unsubscribe and similar links.

It also applies a few local rewrites that make links cleaner and shorter: unwrapping AMP links to the real article, reducing Amazon product links to the short /dp/<ASIN> form, and turning YouTube Shorts links into normal watch links. All of this is computed on your Mac; no network request is involved.

Share-link expansion (opt-in, off by default)

This is the only feature that uses the network, and it is off until you turn it on. When enabled, CopyClean can expand opaque short or share links - for example a vm.tiktok.com link, a Reddit /s/ share link, or a t.co link - into their real destination by following the redirects, then strips trackers from the result. To do that it makes a minimal request to that link's own host. It acts only on a fixed allow-list of known short-link hosts, caps the number of redirect hops with a timeout, and refuses to follow redirects to private or non-public addresses. The link you copied is sent to that link's host and nothing else; it never goes to the developer, and no other clipboard content is ever transmitted. See the Privacy Policy for the full description.

10Locale awareness

The hard part of cleaning text is knowing what to keep. Many "invisible" characters are essential in particular languages, and a naive cleaner that strips them corrupts the text. CopyClean uses your Mac's language and region to keep the characters a given script genuinely needs. Highlights:

  • Thai, Khmer, Lao, Myanmar, Tibetan and Vietnamese - the zero-width space is kept, because these scripts use it as an invisible word break.
  • Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and other right-to-left scripts - direction marks and the Arabic letter mark are kept, so mixed left-to-right and right-to-left text stays laid out correctly.
  • French, German, Russian, Polish and similar - the no-break and narrow no-break spaces used in their typography (for example before certain punctuation, or as a thousands separator) are kept.
  • CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) - the ideographic space is kept for its proper use in CJK layout.
  • Emoji, everywhere - the zero-width joiners that build family emoji, skin tones and flags are kept, and so is the VS16 presentation selector that forces the colorful emoji form. Your emoji never shatter.
  • Mongolian - the free variation selectors are kept for the Mongolian locale.
  • Korean - the halfwidth Hangul filler is kept for the Korean locale.
  • Greek - for the Greek locale, the Greek-letter typography group is left off even when enabled, because Greek letters are normal text, not symbols.
Locale awareness is why CopyClean can be aggressive about junk without mangling real writing. It also fixed cases where a few visible glyphs were once wrongly removed; those now pass through untouched.

11Code detection

When Code Detection is on (the default), CopyClean recognizes when the text you copied is code and treats it gently: it removes only watermark characters and leaves everything else, including zero-width spaces that code might legitimately contain, exactly as is. This stops a hidden character from sneaking into your editor and breaking a build or changing the meaning of a string.

So a snippet like const x = 42; copied with an invisible character lurking in it comes back with the watermark gone but the code otherwise identical. If you ever want code flattened all the way to ASCII anyway, switch to Sterile mode, which cleans even inside code.

12Preserve Formatting and Restore Original

Preserve Formatting (rich text)

By default, when CopyClean cleans it works on the plain text of your clipboard. Turn on Preserve Formatting if you want to keep rich-text styling, such as bold and italic, while still removing the hidden characters underneath. With it off, a clean can flatten styled text to plain text; with it on, the look is preserved and only the characters are cleaned. Leave it off if you usually want plain text out, turn it on if you paste into places where formatting matters.

Restore Original

Restore Original is a one-step undo. CopyClean keeps the most recent original text it cleaned, in memory, so if a clean removed something you actually wanted, choose Restore Original from the menu and the exact text you copied is put back on the clipboard. It only holds the single most recent clean, and it is kept in memory only, never written to disk.

13Privacy

CopyClean collects nothing about you. There is no account, no sign-in, no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no tracking and no ads. The developer cannot see your name, how you use the app, or anything you copy.

All cleaning happens on your Mac, in memory. The clipboard text is read, cleaned and written back locally, and is never uploaded or written to a log. The only feature that ever uses the network is the opt-in Expand share links setting, which is off by default and, when on, sends only a short link you copied to that link's own host in order to resolve it.

Your settings (active mode, which groups are enabled, per-app rules, and so on) are saved locally with the standard macOS preferences system, contain no identifiers, and are removed when you delete the app. For the full picture, read the Privacy Policy.

14Trial, purchase and refunds

CopyClean is free to download with a 7-day free trial. After the trial, a one-time purchase of 12.99 USD (plus any tax, in your region's pricing) unlocks it forever, including future updates. There is no subscription and no recurring charge.

  • Unlock - choose Unlock from the menu's license row to buy through the App Store.
  • Restore Purchase - if you already bought CopyClean (for example on another Mac, or after reinstalling), choose Restore Purchase to re-check your Apple ID and unlock without paying again.
  • When the trial ends - cleaning pauses until you unlock. The app keeps running and your settings are intact; it simply stops modifying the clipboard until purchased.
  • Refunds - purchases and refunds are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store. To request a refund, contact Apple, not the developer; the developer never sees your payment details.

Pricing, tax, the trial, billing and refunds are all administered by Apple under its terms. See the Terms of Service for the licensing details.

15Troubleshooting

It is not cleaning my text

Work through these in order; one of them is almost always the cause:

  • Is it ON? Left-click the icon or check the menu's top row. A dimmed icon means it is off.
  • Is the mode Off? Open the Mode submenu. In Off, nothing is cleaned by design.
  • Is the trigger Manual? In Manual mode CopyClean only cleans when you press the Clean clipboard now hotkey or pick that menu item. Switch to Automatic in Settings, or run Clean clipboard now.
  • Is there a per-app Off rule? If the current app is excluded (or not in your include list), CopyClean leaves it alone. Check your per-app rules.
  • Has the trial expired? When the 7-day trial ends, cleaning pauses until you unlock. The license row tells you, and Unlock or Restore Purchase fixes it.

It touched my code

Make sure Code Detection is on (it is by default), which keeps detected code intact apart from watermarks. Also check that you are not in Sterile mode, which intentionally cleans inside code. For an app you never want cleaned, add it as an excluded app in per-app rules.

Did it break my emoji or right-to-left text?

It should not. CopyClean is emoji-safe (it keeps the zero-width joiners and the VS16 presentation selector) and locale-aware (it keeps direction marks for Arabic, Hebrew and Persian, and word breaks for Thai, Khmer and others). If you do hit a case where an emoji or a non-English string came out wrong, that is a bug we want to fix - please report it with the exact text via the channels below so it can be reproduced.

The icon is missing from the menu bar

A crowded menu bar can hide icons. Try quitting other menu-bar apps, or use a menu-bar manager to reveal hidden items. Confirm CopyClean is running (relaunch it from Applications), and turn on Launch at login so it always starts with your Mac.

Uninstalling

CopyClean is a normal Mac App Store app. Quit it from the menu, then remove it like any app (from Launchpad, or by dragging it from the Applications folder to the Trash). Removing the app removes its settings along with it.

Where settings are stored

Your preferences are stored locally using the standard macOS preferences system (UserDefaults) for CopyClean, under its bundle identifier. They never leave your Mac, contain no record of what you copy, and are deleted when you uninstall.

16FAQ

Does CopyClean work in every app?

Yes. Because it cleans at the clipboard level, it works system-wide: browsers, notes, chat, email, design tools, anywhere you paste. There is no per-app shortcut to remember and nothing that stops working inside a particular editor.

How is this different from "Paste and Match Style"?

Paste and Match Style strips formatting such as bold, fonts and colors, but not invisible Unicode. Zero-width spaces, AI watermarks and the narrow no-break space survive a plain-text paste. CopyClean removes those, automatically, in every app.

Will it defeat AI detectors?

No, and it does not claim to. CopyClean removes the invisible characters and typographic tells that AI text carries so your writing reads clean and neutral, but detectors mostly judge writing patterns, not hidden characters, and nothing reliably evades them. It is a privacy and clean-typography tool, not a detector evasion tool.

Can I keep curly quotes or em dashes if I like them?

Yes. Use Custom mode and turn off the typography groups you want to keep, or turn off Simplify Typography entirely from the menu. You control which groups are rewritten; the semantic groups (math, currency, Greek and so on) are already off by default.

Does it clean images, files or rich content?

CopyClean focuses on text and, optionally, rich text. It cleans plain text and (with Preserve Formatting on) styled text. It is not an image editor and does not alter non-text clipboard content such as images or files.

Does it slow down copying?

No. Cleaning ordinary text takes well under a millisecond and runs in the background, so copy and paste feel instant.

Can I use it on more than one Mac?

Yes. It is tied to your Apple ID, so the one-time purchase covers your Macs. Use Restore Purchase on each one.

Does it sync my settings between Macs?

Settings are stored locally on each Mac and are not synced or uploaded. Set them per machine.

What macOS version do I need?

macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.

17Contact and get help

Still stuck, found a bug, or have a feature request? There are two good ways to reach us. For bugs (especially anything where cleaning touched text it should have kept), the GitHub issue tracker is best, because you can include the exact text so it can be reproduced.

Open a GitHub issue hello [at] copyclean.app

You can also read the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, or head back to the main page for the overview and a live demo of what CopyClean finds in text.

Ready to paste clean? Free 7-day trial, then 12.99 USD once. macOS 14+.
Download on theMac App Store