Legal
Terms of Service
These terms govern your use of the PasteDaemon app and the pastedaemon.app website. They are a real contract, so parts of them are formal — but the substance is short, and the summary below is an accurate account of it rather than a friendly gloss over something else.
- The clipboard manager is free forever. History, search, OCR of images, and pasting from it — including as plain text, and the gather-and-paste-in-order stack. No time limit, no account, no countdown.
- Everything is free and unrestricted until 1 January 2027, then 30 more days of everything, and then the free tier above. Nothing you copied is ever taken away.
- A licence buys the automation — pipelines, triggers, actions, variables, abbreviations, the secrets vault and the local API — one time. One person, all their Macs, and all future updates.
- $4.99 now, $19.99 from 1 January 2027. A licence bought at the lower price is a full licence and is never re-charged or downgraded.
- PasteDaemon runs commands you write, automatically, on your machine. What they do is your responsibility.
- It's sold as-is by one person, with liability capped at what you paid. Your local consumer rights still apply regardless.
The agreement
Who these terms are with
"PasteDaemon", "I", "me" and "my" mean Armand Halbert, an individual sole proprietor in Illinois, United States. "You" means you, whether you use the free tier or hold a licence. The "Software" means the PasteDaemon macOS application and any updates to it; the "Site" means pastedaemon.app.
By downloading, installing or using the Software, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, don't install it — and if you've already paid, ask for a refund under the Refund Policy.
The Privacy Policy and Refund Policy are part of this agreement.
What you get
Your licence
Subject to these terms, you are granted a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to install and use the Software for your own purposes — personal or commercial — on any Mac you own or control.
| Term | What it means here |
|---|---|
| Perpetual | It does not expire, lapse or need renewing. A purchased licence is yours permanently. |
| One person, all their Macs | One purchase covers every Mac you personally own or control. It does not cover a team, a company fleet or shared machines — for that, write to me about a volume arrangement. |
| Commercial use | Explicitly allowed. Use it at work, on client projects, on anything you like. |
| Non-transferable | A licence key is issued to one person's email address and can't be resold, rented or passed on. |
| Updates | A purchased licence covers all future updates to PasteDaemon for macOS at no extra cost, including the ones that come after the price rises. If a substantially different product is ever released under a different name, that would be a separate purchase. |
Licence keys are verified on your own machine and never phone home. Keep your key private: because it is tied to your email address, sharing it publicly both exposes that address and breaches these terms.
What a licence unlocks is the part of the app that acts on what you copy: pipelines in the search bar, triggers, actions, variables, abbreviations, the secrets vault, and the local HTTP and MCP API. Those seven are the licensed features, and the list is the same one the app itself enforces.
The part that is free
The free tier and the beta
PasteDaemon has three states, and which one you are in depends only on the date and on whether you hold a licence. There is no account, and nothing is checked over a network in any of them.
| When | What you get |
|---|---|
| Until 1 January 2027 | Everything, with nothing switched off and nothing counting down. This is the beta. |
| The 30 days after that | Everything, as a trial. The 30 days begin the first time you launch the app after 1 January 2027 — beta use does not spend them, and a copy first opened long afterwards still gets its full thirty. |
| After that, unlicensed | The free tier, permanently: clipboard history, search across it — including the words read out of your screenshots — pasting from it, pasting as plain text, and gathering copies to paste back in order. |
| Licensed | Everything, forever, on every Mac you own, including all future updates. |
The beta end date is compiled into every build. That means a copy downloaded during the beta and never updated still moves to the trial and then to the free tier on schedule, because the app decides from the date each time it runs rather than from which build you happen to have. This is stated here because it is the honest description of what your copy will do — a build downloaded today is not a permanently unrestricted one.
When a licensed feature is unavailable, the app says so at the moment it would have acted, rather than failing silently. Nothing is deleted when a trial ends: secrets keep their ciphertext exactly where it was, and entering a licence opens them again.
Money
Buying, pricing and tax
Licences are sold through Lemon Squeezy, which acts as the merchant of record. Your purchase contract for the payment itself is therefore with Lemon Squeezy, who handle billing, invoicing and collection of any applicable sales tax or VAT; their terms apply to that transaction alongside these. The licence itself is granted by me, under this agreement.
- One-time payment. There is no subscription and nothing auto-renews. You will not be charged again.
- Introductory pricing. PasteDaemon costs $4.99 until 1 January 2027 and $19.99 after that. A licence bought at the introductory price is a full licence: it is never re-charged, never downgraded, and covers every future update exactly as one bought at full price does. Price rises never apply retroactively.
- Prices are shown before you pay, and tax is calculated at checkout from your billing location.
- Delivery is your licence key, emailed to the address you give at checkout, usually within a minute. It begins with
PDMN.— the bare code in the Lemon Squeezy receipt is an order reference, not a key. If nothing arrives, check spam and then write to me. - Refunds are covered by the separate Refund Policy: 30 days, no questions asked.
The boundaries
What you may not do
- Don't redistribute or resell it, including bundling it into another product or distributing modified copies.
- Don't share, publish, sell or generate licence keys, or use a key you didn't buy.
- Don't circumvent the licensing — patching or tampering with the key check or the feature gates is not permitted.
- Don't reverse-engineer, decompile or disassemble the Software, except to the exact extent applicable law gives you that right regardless of contract (for instance EU interoperability rights). Where such a right applies, this restriction does not limit it.
- Don't remove or obscure copyright, trademark or attribution notices.
- Don't use the PasteDaemon name or icon to suggest endorsement or affiliation. Ordinary references — reviews, comparisons, tutorials, "works with PasteDaemon" — are welcome and need no permission.
Read this one
Automation and your responsibility
PasteDaemon is not only a clipboard history. It runs shell commands you write, it can rewrite what you copied the moment you copy it, and it can type on your behalf. That is genuine automation of your machine, and the consequences of what you automate are yours.
You also agree not to use the Software to process content you are not authorised to access, to circumvent another party's access controls or terms, or to do anything unlawful, infringing or in breach of someone's privacy. If you use it at work, whether to run it on the systems and data in front of you is your call under your employer's policies, not mine.
- A rules file from someone else contains their commands. Importing one adds script actions you did not write, which will run when invoked or when an imported trigger fires. Read it first, like any shell script you were sent.
- The local API and MCP server are access to your clipboard history. They are off by default and bound to your own machine, but anything you give the key to can read what you have copied. Connecting an AI assistant means handing your history to that assistant's provider under their terms, which is a decision only you can make.
- Text recognition is imperfect. The words read out of a screenshot are a best effort, particularly at small sizes or low contrast. Check them before relying on them for anything consequential.
- A clipboard history is a record of what you copied, including things you copied by accident. Set retention to suit what you actually handle, exclude the apps that matter, and know that concealed items — the kind password managers mark — are never recorded at all.
- Keep backups of your own. The Software is not a backup system and its history is not one either.
A thing worth saying twice
Your clipboard is yours
Everything the Software records stays on your Mac. I never receive it, cannot receive it, and claim no rights whatsoever over anything you copy, any rule you write, or anything you produce with it. There is no account to close, no server holding your data, and nothing of yours for me to lose. The Privacy Policy sets out exactly what is stored and where.
If you send me feedback, bug reports or feature suggestions, I may use them to improve PasteDaemon without obligation or compensation. That is the only thing you grant me, and you keep every other right in what you send.
Dependencies
Requirements and third parties
The Software requires macOS 14 or later, and runs natively on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs — the download is a single universal build. It asks for the Accessibility permission, which macOS requires before any app may paste into another app on your behalf or watch for a typed abbreviation; you grant it in System Settings and can revoke it there at any time. Without it the history still records and the overlay still opens, but pasting and abbreviations cannot work — that is an operating-system protection, not a defect.
PasteDaemon is built on Apple frameworks and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Apple. Changes Apple makes to macOS, to its permission model, or to its clipboard and accessibility APIs may affect how the Software behaves. I will make reasonable efforts to keep it working, but I cannot guarantee compatibility with future OS versions or with every third-party application.
The Software checks for updates automatically by default, at most once a day, and always asks before installing anything. You can switch this off; what the check does and does not transmit is set out in the Privacy Policy. Purchases involve Lemon Squeezy as described above, and licence emails are delivered through Amazon SES.
Ownership
Who owns what
The Software, the Site, and the PasteDaemon name and marks are owned by Armand Halbert and protected by copyright and other laws. This agreement grants you a licence to use the Software; it does not sell you the Software or transfer any intellectual property rights. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.
The rules you write are yours. Actions, triggers, pipelines and abbreviations you create are your work, and you may share or sell them freely. The standard library that ships with the app is part of the Software.
The formal part
Disclaimer of warranties
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of the above may not apply to you. Nothing here limits any non-waivable statutory rights you have as a consumer, including under EU, UK or US state consumer law.
The formal part
Limitation of liability
MY TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SOFTWARE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU ACTUALLY PAID FOR YOUR LICENCE IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE, OR (B) USD 50.
These limits reflect the reality of the arrangement: PasteDaemon is a low-cost utility built by one person, and the price could not support unlimited risk. They do not apply to liability that cannot lawfully be limited — including for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability applicable law does not permit to be excluded. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, so parts of the above may not apply to you.
You agree to indemnify me against third-party claims arising from your use of the Software in breach of these terms or of applicable law.
Endings
Termination and longevity
This agreement runs until terminated. You may terminate it at any time by deleting the Software. I may terminate your licence if you materially breach these terms — chiefly by redistributing the Software or trafficking in licence keys — in which case you must stop using it and delete it. Termination doesn't entitle you to a refund beyond what the Refund Policy provides, and the sections on ownership, disclaimers, liability and governing law survive it.
I may modify, update or discontinue the Software or the Site, and may revise these terms. Material changes take effect for future use of the Software from the date posted here, with the "last updated" date changed accordingly. Continuing to use the Software after that means you accept the revised terms; if you don't, stop using it. Revised terms never retroactively remove a perpetual licence you have already paid for, and never reduce the free tier described above for a version you already have.
Jurisdiction
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the state and federal courts located in Illinois will have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.
If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, the United Kingdom or another jurisdiction whose law gives you the protection of your home courts and mandatory consumer rules, nothing in this section deprives you of that protection — you may bring proceedings where you live, and the mandatory consumer law of your country of residence continues to apply.
Before starting formal proceedings, please email me. Nearly everything is resolvable in a message or two, and a refund is usually the fastest answer.
Housekeeping
General
- Entire agreement. These terms, with the Privacy and Refund policies, are the whole agreement between us about the Software, and supersede anything said elsewhere, including marketing copy.
- Severability. If a provision is held unenforceable, it is limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stays in force.
- No waiver. Not enforcing a provision on one occasion isn't a waiver of it.
- Assignment. You may not assign these terms. I may assign them to a successor in connection with a transfer of the PasteDaemon business, on notice posted here; your licence terms would not change.
- Force majeure. Neither of us is liable for failures caused by events genuinely outside our reasonable control.
- Export. You agree not to use or export the Software in violation of US export control or sanctions laws.
- Language. These terms are written in English; the English version governs if translated.
Questions about any of this: hello@pastedaemon.app.