Email support@iterative.design and a human will read it. We aim to reply within three business days.
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This is the most common issue by a wide margin, and it is almost always Accessibility permission. BetterPaste pastes by synthesizing the ⌘V keystroke for you, and macOS will not let any app do that without Accessibility access.
Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, confirm BetterPaste is listed and the switch is on, then quit and reopen BetterPaste. macOS often requires the app to restart before a newly granted permission takes effect. If BetterPaste is not in the list at all, use the + button to add it from your Applications folder.
You can tell this apart from a recording problem quickly: if your history panel is filling up normally and only the paste step fails, it is Accessibility.
Recording your clipboard needs no macOS permission, so this is not a Privacy & Security setting. Check instead that BetterPaste is actually running — it lives in the menu bar rather than the Dock — and that you have copied something since it started. Your unpinned history is held in memory only, so it is empty every time the app launches, including after a restart. Turn on launch at login in settings if you would rather not think about it.
That is the retention window doing its job. BetterPaste keeps unpinned items for a set period of time and then discards them, and it also drops them when the app quits. If things are vanishing sooner than you would like, open settings and increase the retention duration. Anything you pin is exempt: pinned items never expire.
Another application may have claimed the same shortcut — this is the most common cause. Open BetterPaste's settings and assign a different combination to confirm. If a new shortcut works, the original was being intercepted upstream.
No, and this is intentional rather than a limitation we plan to remove. Syncing would require sending your clipboard contents off your machine, and we've chosen not to build that. See the privacy policy for our reasoning.
Clear History from BetterPaste's menu empties your recent items, and quitting the app clears them too — they are held in memory and never written to disk.
Pinned items are the exception. Pins are the one thing BetterPaste saves to disk, and they survive both Clear History and quitting — that is what pinning is for. To get rid of a pinned item, unpin it first (press p on it in the panel), then clear your history.
If the item is not pinned, Clear History from the menu removes it immediately, and quitting BetterPaste does the same — unpinned history exists only in memory. Nothing was written to disk and there is no copy anywhere else.
If you pinned it, clearing your history will not remove it. Unpin it first, then clear. This matters: pinned items are stored on your Mac in readable form, so a pinned password stays there until you unpin it.
The version downloaded from this site does not update itself. When a new version is released we post it on the BetterPaste page; to install it, quit BetterPaste, download the new disk image, and drag the app into Applications over the old copy. Your pinned items are kept.
A build installed from the Mac App Store updates itself in the usual way.
Expected, and it is a one-time cost of this particular update. BetterPaste 1.2.0 is signed by Iterative Design LLC, and macOS treats a differently-signed build as a different application for two purposes.
Your preferences reset to their defaults. The keyboard shortcut, the retention window, and launch at login all need setting again in settings.
Accessibility access has to be granted again. macOS ties that permission to the code-signing identity, so the previous grant does not carry over. Grant it as described above, then quit and reopen BetterPaste.
Your pinned items are kept. They survive the update and you do not need to do anything to preserve them. Only your settings and that one permission are affected.
Quit BetterPaste and drag it from your Applications folder to the Trash. That removes the app and your recent history, which was only ever in memory.
Your pinned items are stored outside the application, and macOS leaves that folder behind when you delete an app. To remove them as well, open Finder, press ⌘⇧G, go to ~/Library/Application Support, and drag the BetterPaste folder to the Trash. A sandboxed build installed from the Mac App Store keeps them in its own container under ~/Library/Containers instead.
If you believe you have found a security or privacy vulnerability, please write to support@iterative.design with the details rather than posting publicly. We will acknowledge your report and keep you updated on the fix.