If you live between an Android phone and a Mac, clipboard sync is the boring feature that saves you dozens of paste-in-Messages round-trips a day. Apple’s Universal Clipboard doesn’t help — it only works between Apple devices. LAN-based tools only help when both devices are on the same WiFi. Cloud clipboards only help if you’re willing to hand a copy of your clipboard to a third-party server.
This guide sets up two-way clipboard sync between Android and Mac with a single app pair that doesn’t need any of that. You’ll be copying-and-pasting across devices in about 60 seconds.
What you need#
- An Android phone running Android 10 (API 29) or newer, on real hardware. Emulators don’t expose the host’s Bluetooth radio, so they’re not supported.
- A Mac running macOS 13 Ventura or newer, Apple Silicon recommended.
- Bluetooth turned on on both devices. No WiFi or cellular required.
That’s it. No account, no sign-in, no server.
Step 1 — Install the apps#
Install the Mac app from the download page — it’s a standard .dmg. On first launch, right-click the app icon and choose Open (macOS Gatekeeper asks for this the first time with any direct download).
Install the Android app from the Google Play Store. On first launch the Android app walks you through three permissions: Bluetooth (required, to pair with the Mac), Notifications (for the persistent foreground-service notice), and Skip battery optimization (so Samsung, OnePlus, and Xiaomi skins don’t kill the background service after ~15 minutes).
For detailed install guides: Install on Mac and Install on Android.
Step 2 — Pair the two devices#
On the Mac: click the ClipHop icon in the menu bar and choose Pair a new device. The Mac shows a QR code and a 6-digit code.
On the Android phone: open ClipHop and tap Pair with Mac. Choose Scan QR (easier) or Enter code (if your camera can’t see the Mac screen).
Under the hood, both devices perform an X25519 Elliptic-Curve Diffie-Hellman handshake, authenticated by their long-term Ed25519 identity keys. The output is a shared AES-256-GCM session key that lives in memory only — no server, no cloud, no account is involved. The pair guide walks through the process in more detail.
Step 3 — Verify the identity fingerprint#
Once connected, both devices show a short identity fingerprint. Check that the short code on the Mac matches what the phone shows. If it does, your pairing is end-to-end encrypted to the device you actually have in your hand — nothing can MITM this pair.
You can re-verify the fingerprint any time:
- On Android: open Paired Devices → tap the paired Mac.
- On Mac: open Preferences → Security.
Ongoing verification matters because MITM attacks aren’t always caught at pair time. If the fingerprint ever changes, something is wrong and you should unpair and re-pair.
Step 4 — Copy, paste, done#
Now the routine part:
- Copy anything on the phone (a URL, an OTP you typed out, a shell command) and it’s on the Mac’s clipboard in under a second.
- Copy on the Mac and the Android clipboard updates the moment the clip arrives.
Both platforms have an auto-apply toggle that’s on by default — incoming clips overwrite the local clipboard immediately, so you just paste normally (⌘V on Mac, long-press on Android). If you’d rather browse received items before they become your clipboard, you can turn Auto-apply off in settings and clips will sit in history until you pick one.
Sending is manual by default: you tap the ✈ send icon on any history item to push it to the other device. There’s an opt-in Auto-send beta that sends every copy automatically, but the app itself warns that this is unfiltered — including passwords and OTPs — so default to manual unless you’re in a deliberately-everything workflow.
Does it really work on a plane?#
Yes. Bluetooth LE doesn’t need WiFi, doesn’t need cellular, doesn’t need any network at all. The phone and the Mac talk directly to each other over a short-range radio. Airplane mode (without “Bluetooth off”) leaves sync working fine. Same for hotel captive portals, coffee-shop networks you don’t trust, or co-working spaces where the two devices are on different VLANs.
What clipboard content works?#
In v0.1.0:
- ✅ Plain text
- ✅ URLs
- 🚧 Rich text (roadmap)
- 🚧 Images (roadmap — likely the next major type added)
- 🚧 Files (roadmap)
For most day-to-day clipboard traffic — links, shell commands, OTPs, notes — plain-text support covers the overwhelming majority of clips.
If something doesn’t work#
The most common issue isn’t pairing — it’s Android’s aggressive battery killers. Samsung One UI, OnePlus OxygenOS, and Xiaomi MIUI all ship with OEM-level battery policies that stop background services after 10–15 minutes. If your pair drops when you put the phone in your pocket, go to:
Settings → Apps → ClipHop → Battery → Unrestricted (exact path varies by OEM).
Pixel and stock Android almost never need this. The Android install guide has the details.
Why “one phone, one Mac”?#
v0.1.0 supports one active pair at a time. That’s a deliberate privacy choice: your clipboard only reaches one trusted peer, not broadcast to every device you own. Multi-pair support is on the roadmap, but we wanted to get one-to-one right first — the fingerprint verification model depends on a clear mental picture of who you’re connected to.
Under the hood (quick version)#
If you want the engineering rationale — why Bluetooth LE over WiFi, iCloud, or LAN-based tools — that’s in Why we chose Bluetooth LE for clipboard sync. And if you’re curious about the cryptographic specifics (X25519, AES-256-GCM, Ed25519, HKDF) those are in a separate post coming up.
Grab the apps from the download page and copy-paste your way across devices.