Maccy limits how many items it remembers, not how big each one can be. By default it keeps 200 entries, and you can raise that to 999 in Settings → Storage → Size. Long text is only shortened in the menu preview. The full content is still stored and pasted.
TL;DR
- History limit: default 200 items, adjustable up to 999.
- Preview limit: menu titles and previews are truncated for display only.
- Per-item size: no documented fixed cap. The practical ceiling is macOS pasteboard behavior, your RAM and disk, and the app that did the copying.
- Most “missing” items come from the Storage type toggles or the Ignore rules, not from a size limit.
Why does “clipboard size limit” mean three different things?
When people search for this, they usually mean one of three things. They look similar from the outside (“Maccy App lost my thing”), but the fixes are completely different, so it pays to work out which one you’re hitting.
| What you’re seeing | Actual cause | Where to fix it |
|---|---|---|
| Old items disappear | History count limit reached | Settings → Storage → Size |
| A long snippet looks cut off in the list | Display truncation, not data loss | Hover for the preview, or paste it to check |
| A big image or file never shows up | Content type disabled, or the source app didn’t put it on the pasteboard | Settings → Storage → Save (Files / Images / Text) |
| Copies from one app are never captured | Ignore rules (app, pasteboard type, regex) | Settings → Ignore |
How many items can Maccy store?
The history limit is the one real, user-facing cap. Open Maccy Mac → Settings → Storage and you’ll find a Size setting. It defaults to 200 and goes up to 999. When you exceed it, the oldest unpinned entries are dropped to make room.
A few details worth knowing:
- Copying the same thing twice doesn’t use two slots. Maccy moves the existing entry back to the top instead of adding a duplicate. The “Sort by” option (last copy time, first copy time, or number of copies) changes how that looks.
- Pinned items are meant to stick around. If you rely on pins for snippets you reuse daily, they’re the safest place for them.
- Bigger isn’t free. A 999-item history full of screenshots takes far more storage than 999 short strings. If Maccy feels heavy, lower the number or turn off image saving before blaming the app.
Is there a maximum size for a single copied item?
I’m not aware of a documented hard limit on how large one item can be, and I’d rather say that plainly than invent a number. In practice, three things set the ceiling:
- The source app. Maccy can only store what an app actually writes to the macOS pasteboard. Some apps put a short preview or a promise for the data on the pasteboard instead of the whole thing, particularly for very large images and files.
- The pasteboard types involved. One copy can carry several representations at once (plain text, RTF, HTML, an image). Rich content therefore weighs more than the visible text suggests.
- Your machine. Memory and disk. Copying several hundred megabytes of data will strain any clipboard manager, and it’s rarely a good idea.
If you’re copying something unusually large (a huge log file, a multi-megabyte JSON blob), test with a sample first. Copy it, open Maccy Clipboard, paste it into a plain-text editor, and compare the length against the original. That takes thirty seconds and tells you more than any spec sheet.
Why does long text look cut off in the Maccy menu?
This is the most common false alarm. Maccy shortens each entry’s title so the menu stays readable. Anything past the visible length is replaced with an ellipsis. That’s presentation, not storage. The full text is still held, and pasting inserts all of it.
Two controls affect what you see:
- Settings → Appearance includes options for how much of an item is previewed, including image preview height and line counts.
- Hovering over an item shows a longer preview after a short delay.
Power users sometimes adjust a hidden title-length value through defaults write. I haven’t confirmed the current key name, so check the Maccy repository’s documentation before relying on it.
Why isn’t my big image or file showing up in Maccy?
Before suspecting size, check these in order:
- Settings → Storage → Save. Maccy lets you choose which content types to keep: files, images, and text. If images are off, no screenshot will ever appear, however small.
- Settings → Ignore. You can exclude specific apps, pasteboard types, or content matching a regex. Password managers are typically ignored by design, and that’s a feature.
- The copy itself. Open another app and paste. If it doesn’t paste there either, the problem is upstream of Maccy.
How do I make Maccy keep more (or less)?
| Goal | Setting | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Longer memory | Raise Size toward 999 | More storage, slightly longer lists to scan |
| Lighter footprint | Lower Size, disable Images | Older copies vanish sooner |
| Keep key snippets forever | Pin them | Pins are manual |
| Privacy-first | Clear history on quit; use Ignore rules | No long-term recall |
Because Maccy is local-first, everything it stores stays on your Mac. A bigger history doesn’t mean more data leaving your machine. It only means more on your own disk.
The practical takeaway
If something “disappeared,” it’s almost always the history count, a disabled content type, or an Ignore rule. It’s rarely a size cap. Check Storage first, then Ignore, then test the copy in another app. Which of those turned out to be the culprit for you?
Maccy is free and privacy-security/is-maccy-safe-privacy-security-review-2026″>open source. Download it from maccy.app.