Menu bar, Services and Shortcuts

The picker is the fastest way in, but there are a few others.

The menu bar menu

HandyPaste's icon sits in the menu bar. Click it for:

• Open Picker and Save Selection as Snippet, with their shortcuts shown
• Favorites: your starred snippets
• Recent: the snippets you used last
• your folders, as submenus that mirror the library
• Open Snippet Library, Statistics, New Snippet, Settings… and Quit HandyPaste

Choosing a snippet from the menu pastes it into the app you were using, just like the picker does. If it asks questions, the picker opens with them.

Don't want the icon? Turn off Settings ▸ General ▸ Show in menu bar. You can still open the picker with its shortcut, and opening HandyPaste from the Applications folder brings back the library.

The Services menu

New HandyPaste Snippet from Selection is available in the Services menu of almost every app. It saves the selected text as a new snippet. See Saving text from any app.

The Shortcuts app

HandyPaste adds four actions to the Shortcuts app. Find them by searching for “HandyPaste” in the actions list.

Action	What it does	Needs
Open HandyPaste Picker	Opens the picker, ready to search and paste	Free
Get Snippet Text	Returns a snippet's text, with its date, time and clipboard placeholders filled in	Pro
Copy Snippet	Copies a snippet to the clipboard, with its placeholders filled in	Pro
Create Snippet	Saves text as a new snippet, with an optional title and folder, and returns it	Pro

Snippets and folders are parameters you pick from a searchable list.

Snippets that ask questions ({{input:…}}, {{choose:…}}) can't be answered inside a shortcut. Get Snippet Text and Copy Snippet say so; use Open HandyPaste Picker for those instead.

Create Snippet

Create Snippet takes:

• Text (required): what to save. It's saved exactly as given, like Save Selection, so braces stay braces.
• Title (optional): without one, the snippet is named after the first line of the text.
• Folder (optional): pick one of your folders; without one, it goes into no folder.

If the text is empty, or the folder was deleted in the meantime, the action stops with a message and saves nothing.

Example: save from the Share menu

Make a shortcut that saves whatever you share to it:

1. In the shortcut's details, turn on Show in Share Sheet and let it receive Text.
2. Add Create Snippet, with Text set to Shortcut Input and Folder set to, say, Inbox.

Now select text in almost any app, choose Share ▸ your shortcut and it's saved, with no permission needed.

Example: a daily stand-up note

A shortcut that puts today's stand-up template into a new note:

1. Get Snippet Text: choose your Stand-up snippet.
2. Create Note with the result as its body.

With this snippet, every run gives you a note with today's date already in it:

Stand-up — {{date:EEEE d MMMM}}

Yesterday:
Today:
Blockers:

Example: a keyboard shortcut for one snippet

Want your email signature on ⌃⌥S? Make a shortcut with just Copy Snippet, then in the shortcut's details choose Add Keyboard Shortcut. Press it and then ⌘V.

AI apps

Claude and other apps that support MCP can search, fill in and save your snippets, and use your Prompts folder as prompts. See AI apps (MCP).

Spotlight and Siri

HandyPaste offers three actions as App Shortcuts, so you can run them from Spotlight or ask Siri without building a shortcut first:

• Open Picker: “Open HandyPaste picker” or “Search snippets in HandyPaste”
• Copy Snippet: “Copy a snippet with HandyPaste”, or name the snippet, as in “Copy Home Address with HandyPaste” (Pro)
• Create Snippet: “Create a snippet with HandyPaste” or “Save a snippet in HandyPaste” (Pro)