# Write pasteboard to filesystem [Original tweet](https://twitter.com/jessmartin/status/1545787742759653378) with idea: > A simple tool to save my clipboard items to a directory as files. > I can use my other file-based tools to search, edit, organize, etc. > Unix philosophy applied to a clipboard manager. Installed Maccy and loving it. Would love to be able to add to a queue and have unified search over my clipboard history as well as browsing history. Maybe this is more about a [[Personal Search Engine]] ## Challenges ### Polling required to monitor changes on macOS Have to poll the pasteboard to find out if it has changed. Several examples to draw from: - [Sindre Sorhus' Pasteboard Viewer](https://github.com/sindresorhus/Pasteboard-Viewer) has [a publisher extension of NSPasteboard](https://github.com/sindresorhus/Pasteboard-Viewer/blob/main/Pasteboard%20Viewer/Utilities.swift#L649-L698) that can be used to watch for changes. - [rsms's TypoFig]() has [a minimal example](https://github.com/rsms/TypoFig/blob/master/TypoFig/AppDelegate.m#L27) of polling. ### Protecting private information It's possible