Fix Pesto problems

Paste does nothing, or only copies

Pesto needs the Accessibility permission to paste into other apps. In Pesto’s own Settings, choose General and use Open Accessibility Settings…, make sure Pesto is on, then quit and reopen Pesto. Without it Pesto puts the clip on the clipboard and shows “Press Command V to paste”. If you opened Pesto from the disk image or the Downloads folder, move it to Applications first: the permission and updates need that one installed copy.

Pesto is switched on in Accessibility, but paste stopped working after an update

macOS can keep the old entry for a copy of Pesto it no longer recognizes, so the switch looks on but does nothing. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, select Pesto, and remove it with the − button. Then quit Pesto, open it again from Applications, and turn it on when it asks (or use General → Open Accessibility Settings…).

macOS asks for Keychain access after an update

When updating from version 1.0.0 to 1.0.1 or later, macOS asks to confirm access to Pesto’s encryption key in your login Keychain. Choose Always Allow. The first release was signed with a self-signed identity; releases from 1.0.1 onward are signed with an Apple Developer ID, and macOS preserves access across subsequent updates.

Nothing new is captured

macOS may be blocking clipboard reads: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Paste from Other Apps → Pesto → Allow. The menu bar shows “Clipboard Access Limited — Open Settings…” when this is the case.
The app you copied from may be on the exclusion list (password managers are). Check Settings → Privacy → App exclusions.
Concealed copies (a password manager’s “copy password”) are dropped on purpose.

The shelf shows a blurred history

The history lock is on. Authenticate with Touch ID or your password. Change it in Settings → Privacy → History lock.

“Can’t unlock your clipboard history”

Pesto could not find its encryption key in your Keychain (for example after a Keychain reset), or the key it found does not open your history. Your old history cannot be read without the key. The alert offers three choices:

Quit, if you want to look for the key first (a Keychain or Time Machine backup). Nothing is changed.
Start With Empty History, to continue with a new key and an empty shelf.
Restore from Backup…, to choose a Pesto backup file, enter its passphrase or recovery key and see what it holds. Only when you press Restore does Pesto replace the history it can no longer read with the backup, in one step. A wrong passphrase or Cancel changes nothing and brings the alert back.

Starting empty and restoring both delete the history Pesto can no longer read; nothing is deleted before then. Pesto will not create a new key behind your back.

Two copies are running (for example one from a download and one from a development build). Quit both from the Terminal with pkill -x Pesto, then open the one you want.

A shortcut doesn’t work

Another app may already use it. Settings → Shortcuts shows a conflict warning. Record a different shortcut. The plain-text shortcut (Control Option Command V) did nothing in one hand test that could not be repeated from the code; it also needs plain text on the clipboard, and it beeps when there is none. If you can, run log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "net.copypesto.pesto" AND category == "hotkey"' in Terminal, press it, and include what it prints: “Registered Paste as plain text: status -9878” means another app owns it, and no “Pressed” line means it never fired.

Sensitive pictures are not blurred

Picture screening uses your Mac’s on-device model, so it works only on a Mac with Apple Intelligence turned on (macOS 27), and it is best-effort: it can miss things. Right-click a clip and choose Mark as Sensitive to blur one yourself. Links to adult sites are detected automatically by their address and page title.

Describe Image isn’t offered

It appears only on a Mac with Apple Intelligence turned on, running macOS 27 or later.

If Pesto quits unexpectedly

Pesto writes the reason to ~/Library/Application Support/net.copypesto.pesto/last-exception.txt the next time it crashes. Please include that file and the output of About → Copy Diagnostics when you report the problem. For a crash, the newest Pesto entry under Console → Crash Reports helps too. Both are public if you post them in an issue, so read them first.

Starting over

Clear History in the menu bar removes your history (pinned clips are kept; Settings → Data → Start over → Clear Everything… removes them too, and your collections and snippets). To reset every setting, quit Pesto and remove ~/Library/Preferences/net.copypesto.pesto.plist.

This guide matches Pesto as of October 29, 2026. App commit 70204d2.