⚡
Instant fire
Expansion the moment your typed buffer matches a trigger. No boundary key, no delay.
macOS 13+ · Swift native · Open source
Type short.
Type short.
Paste long.
A native macOS text expander. Set a trigger like ;email —
the moment you type it anywhere, KeyPaste swaps it for the full text,
with live data: clipboard, date, a fresh UUID, cursor placement.
Free & open source (AGPL-3.0). Not yet notarized — a quick one-time step to open it is shown below. Apple Developer ID lands in v1.0.
Everything in a 5 MB menu-bar app
🧩
Live templates
{{clipboard}}, {{date}}, {{uuid}}, relative dates {{date:+1d}} and custom formats.
🎯
Per-app scope
One trigger, two meanings: ;addr gives your work address in Mail, home in Messages.
↩︎
Cursor & keys
{{cursor}} parks the caret in multi-line snippets; {{enter}}/{{tab}} press keys after the paste.
📦
Snippet packs
One-click installs: Dates & Times, Identifiers, SQL, Python, HTML/Markdown, Lorem Ipsum.
🔒
Privacy-first
Runs entirely on your Mac. No network, no telemetry, no account. Plain-JSON storage you own.
Install in three steps
KeyPaste isn't notarized yet, so macOS asks once before the first launch. Here's the whole dance — it takes under a minute.
-
1
Download & open
Open
KeyPaste.dmg, drag KeyPaste.app to/Applications. On first launch you'll see "can't be opened — unidentified developer." Right-click the app → Open → confirm. One time only. -
2
Grant Accessibility
System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → enable KeyPaste, then quit and relaunch. This lets it watch for your triggers and deliver the paste.
-
3
Make your first trigger
Click the menu-bar icon → Edit Triggers… (⌘N). Tip: prefix triggers with
;(e.g.;email) so they don't fire mid-word.
Prefer to build it yourself? git clone and run
./scripts/build-app.sh — full instructions in the
README.
A real app, not a config file
Community · open packs
Don't start from a blank list
Install a ready-made pack in one click and import it straight into KeyPaste — signatures, dates, SQL, Markdown, git & DevOps commands, Python and JS boilerplate. 70+ triggers and growing.
Everyday
Python
JavaScript
SQL
Markdown
Git
DevOps
Why KeyPaste
| KeyPaste | TextExpander | Espanso | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free · open source | $40 / year | Free |
| Native macOS (Swift) | ✓ | Electron | Rust CLI |
| Per-app scope | ✓ | ✓ (paid) | ✓ |
| No account / no cloud | ✓ | Cloud | ✓ |
| Visual editor | ✓ | ✓ | YAML files |
| Privacy: zero telemetry | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
Stop retyping the same things.
Free, native, private. Set a trigger in a minute.