How to Copy and Paste on a Mac: Every Method, Explained

If you've come to the Mac from Windows, the only real change is the key: on a Mac, copy and paste use the Command (⌘) key, not Control. Everything else works the way you'd expect, plus a few extras that are worth knowing: pasting without the formatting, moving files, and copying on your iPhone to paste on your Mac.

The keyboard shortcuts

These work in almost every app on macOS:

Action	Shortcut	What it does
Copy	`⌘` `C`	Puts a copy of the selection on the clipboard
Cut	`⌘` `X`	Removes the selection and puts it on the clipboard
Paste	`⌘` `V`	Inserts whatever is on the clipboard
Paste and Match Style	`⌥` `⇧` `⌘` `V`	Pastes text using the formatting of where you're pasting
Select All	`⌘` `A`	Selects everything in the current document or field
Undo	`⌘` `Z`	Reverses a paste you didn't mean to make

Press and hold ⌘ first, then tap the letter. You don't need to press them at exactly the same time.

Copy and paste with the mouse or trackpad

Select the text or item by dragging over it (or double-click a word, triple-click a paragraph).
Control-click the selection. On a trackpad, click with two fingers; on a mouse, right-click if it's set up for it.
Choose Copy from the menu that appears.
Control-click where you want it to go and choose Paste.

The same commands live in the Edit menu at the top of the screen in every app, which is also the easiest way to discover each app's own variations.

Drag and drop

You can skip the clipboard entirely: select some text or an image and drag it into another window. Between apps, dragging copies. Within the same document, dragging usually moves the selection; hold ⌥ Option while you drag to copy it instead.

Copying and moving files in Finder

Finder treats cut differently from text, which confuses almost everyone at first. ⌘ X doesn't cut files. Instead:

To copy a file: select it, press ⌘ C, open the destination folder, press ⌘ V.
To move a file: select it, press ⌘ C, open the destination, then press ⌥ ⌘ V. The Edit menu shows this as Move Item Here when you hold Option.

Dragging a file to another folder on the same drive moves it; dragging it to a different drive copies it. Hold ⌥ while dragging to force a copy.

Paste without bringing the formatting along

When you copy from a web page into an email, the fonts, colours and links usually come with it. Paste and Match Style (⌥ ⇧ ⌘ V) drops all of that and takes on the style of the document you're pasting into. Not every app supports it, and a few use a different shortcut. We cover each case in how to paste without formatting on a Mac.

Copy on your iPhone, paste on your Mac

Apple's Universal Clipboard lets you copy on one device and paste on another nearby. It works between Macs, iPhones and iPads when:

they're signed in to the same Apple Account,
Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth are turned on on both, and
Handoff is turned on (on the Mac: System Settings → General → AirDrop & Handoff).

Copy normally on one device and paste normally on the other. The copied item only stays available for a short time, so paste it soon.

How to see what's on the clipboard

In Finder, choose Edit → Show Clipboard to see the item currently on it. The standard clipboard holds one thing: copy something new and the previous item is replaced. We explain where the clipboard lives and how to empty it in where is the clipboard on a Mac.

Get back things you copied earlier

Because the clipboard only holds the last thing you copied, the question that follows is usually "how do I get back what I copied before that?" Recent versions of macOS include a basic clipboard history in Spotlight, and dedicated clipboard managers keep much more. Both are covered in how to see your clipboard history on a Mac.

When copy and paste isn't working

Try the Edit menu. If Edit → Copy is greyed out, nothing is selected, or the app doesn't allow copying that content.
Check the shortcut in another app. If ⌘ V works in TextEdit but not in one app, that app has remapped it or is blocking paste (some password and banking forms do).
Restart the clipboard service. Open Activity Monitor, search for pboard, select it and quit it with the ✕ button. macOS starts it again automatically.
Check your keyboard. On an external Windows keyboard, the key that acts as ⌘ is usually the Windows key, set in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Modifier Keys.