Tapbots has laid out Pastebot 3 pricing and features for its Mac clipboard manager, giving users a choice between a direct license and an App Store subscription. The app keeps a searchable record of copied items, lets users organize clippings into saved collections, and adds automation-friendly tools for people who treat copy and paste as part of their workflow rather than a reflex.
The basic pitch is familiar: Pastebot stores clipboard history so users can retrieve text, images, and other copied material after the original copy action has passed. Tapbots says users can search clippings as they type, inspect metadata, attach searchable notes, and open a resizable preview for details such as image contents.
Clipboard managers have an obvious privacy problem because they can capture whatever a user copies. Tapbots addresses that with blacklists. According to the company, Pastebot can be set to ignore specific apps entirely, or to skip certain kinds of content such as images, text, or shortcuts. That matters for password managers, banking apps, chat clients, and any other software where saving copied material would be a bad idea.
How much does Pastebot 3 cost?
Tapbots says Pastebot 3 has a 14-day free trial under both purchase options. Buying directly from Tapbots costs $39 and includes one year of updates; users can later pay $19 for another year of updates, and Tapbots says customers keep the last version they paid for. Direct purchases also include a 30-day refund policy, and Pastebot 2 license holders can enter their old key as a promo code for a $12.99 upgrade discount.
The App Store version uses a subscription instead. Tapbots lists it at $24.99 per year or $2.99 per month, with billing through an Apple Account. The company says the App Store route avoids license keys, handles downloads and updates through Apple, and supports Family Sharing.
What does Pastebot 3 do beyond clipboard history?
Pastebot 3 lets users create Custom Pastebins for clippings they want to keep permanently, with colors, icons, or emoji for identification. It also supports Smart Pastebins, which filter clippings by rules rather than requiring manual filing.
The app’s quick paste menu appears in any Mac app with Shift-Command-V, according to Tapbots. From there, users can paste one of the 10 most recent copies with number keys, switch between pastebins with Command-left or Command-right, and attach a preview window to the menu.
Filters are the heavier automation layer. Tapbots says users can stack base filters into more complex transformations, assign keyboard shortcuts to common filters, and preview results live while building them. The company does not list every filter type on the product page, so buyers should treat the feature as a workflow tool to test during the trial rather than assume it covers every text-cleaning job.
Stacks handle a different nuisance: copying several items and pasting them back in order. Users can add clippings to a stack with the right-arrow key, collect new copies while the stack window is open, and paste stack items sequentially with Control-Command-V or a custom hotkey.
Tapbots also says Pastebot 3 supports iCloud Sync across Macs, Apple Universal Clipboard, Apple Shortcuts, and command-line access through a bundled helper at /Applications/Pastebot.app/Contents/Helpers/pastebot-tool. MacStories editor John Voorhees praised the beta in a review quoted by Tapbots, saying his Mac felt broken when the beta expired before release.
This story draws on original reporting from Pastebot 3.
