How to uninstall Clipy on Mac

Clipy is a menu-bar clipboard manager, so the thing to protect before removing it is your clipboard history and any saved snippets. Quit Clipy before backing up its data, and keep both Application Support folders described below if you want to preserve history and snippets. This guide covers the official .dmg download and the Homebrew cask clipy. Clipy stays in the menu bar and can launch at login, so check its login item before removing it.

Quit Clipy and stop it launching at login

1. Click the Clipy icon in the menu bar, open its menu, and quit it. Closing the snippet window does not stop the menu-bar process.
2. Confirm that the Clipy process has exited in Activity Monitor.
3. Open System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions. If Clipy is listed under Open at Login, remove it there so it does not relaunch. Clipy also offers its own "Launch Clipy on system startup" toggle inside its preferences.

Back up history and snippets

Clipy 1.3.0 stores both clipboard history and snippets in ~/Library/Application Support/com.clipy-app.Clipy/sqlite.db. The separate ~/Library/Application Support/Clipy folder holds legacy history files from Clipy 1.2.1 and earlier; it is not a complete backup of the current database. See Clipy’s database location and history and snippet migration.

With Clipy fully quit, use Finder’s Shift + Command + G to open each parent folder and copy both ~/Library/Application Support/com.clipy-app.Clipy and ~/Library/Application Support/Clipy, when present, to a backup location outside ~/Library. Copy the whole folders, including any database companion files. Keep these copies until you have checked the wanted history and snippets after restoring them. If you cannot confirm the backup, leave the original folders in place and uncheck them in Mole.

Remove the app

Open Finder's Applications folder and move Clipy to the Trash. If macOS says it is in use, return to the step above and confirm the menu-bar process has quit.

Review its data, caches, and preferences

In Finder, press Shift + Command + G and inspect each location below. Skip any that do not exist, and review what a folder holds before moving it to the Trash rather than deleting the parent Library folder.

These locations come from the Homebrew cask's zap list and the recorded test; not every Mac has every entry. See Clipy on GitHub for the project and its documentation.

If you installed it with Homebrew

Mole removes a cask like brew uninstall --cask --zap clipy, but it skips --zap when its list reaches unchecked or shared data, or when the full removal scope cannot be verified, and still cleans the leftovers you selected. The Clipy cask’s zap list includes both ~/Library/Application Support/com.clipy-app.Clipy and ~/Library/Application Support/Clipy. Running zap yourself moves both to the Trash regardless of Mole’s checkboxes. Back up both folders after quitting Clipy, or keep the data and remove only the app:

brew uninstall --cask clipy

Check the result

After removing the app, run these read-only checks:

pgrep -il clipy
ls -d "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.clipy-app.Clipy" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Clipy"

• No output from pgrep means no matching Clipy process was found. Check any listed process and quit Clipy before deleting data; a command error does not confirm it has exited.
• A printed path only confirms that folder exists, not that its database or history is intact. "No such file or directory" means the named folder is absent; a permission error needs separate investigation.

What Mole lists

Mole lists these Clipy items when present:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Clipy holds legacy history files and is listed but not selected by default; keep it or back it up before ticking it.
• ~/Library/Application Support/com.clipy-app.Clipy is selected by default even though it contains the current history and snippets database. Uncheck it to keep that data, or back up the whole folder before removing it.
• The com.clipy-app.Clipy.plist preferences, bundle-id cache, per-app Crashlytics cache and cookie store are selected by default.
• A Clipy login item is listed for review rather than removed silently, since it is startup state.

What this test covered

Clipy was installed from its official download and uninstalled on September 19, 2026 using the official Mole build 277, with Full Disk Access and no Homebrew receipt. It ran as a menu-bar app with Sparkle updates, and ~/Library/Application Support/com.clipy-app.Clipy was removed. That test did not verify preserving or restoring populated history and snippets, or the Homebrew uninstall route.

The recorded run left a per-app Crashlytics cache behind. The selection defaults described above reflect Mole’s cleanup rules, not a claim that build 277 removed that cache.