clippy

Clippy is a macOS‑only command‑line utility that copies files to the system clipboard as file references rather than raw data, enabling direct pasting into GUI applications such as Slack, email clients, or editors. It detects the appropriate clipboard format automatically, supporting single files, multiple files, and piped input, and can also handle textual content with explicit flags.

The tool provides shortcuts for recent downloads, allowing users to copy the most recent file or a set of recent items, optionally invoking an interactive picker filtered by time or count. It integrates with Spotlight for on‑the‑fly file searches, and offers a combined copy‑and‑paste mode that pastes the selected file immediately. Additional commands clear the clipboard and expose debugging information.

Clippy also performs content‑type detection for JSON, HTML, XML, and other formats, ensuring receiving applications interpret pasted data correctly. It can be installed via Homebrew and used as a Go library for custom integrations, forming part of a broader terminal‑first clipboard suite.