Privacy

Holt collects no data. There's no Holt account and no Holt server.

Last updated October 28, 2026. This covers Holt for Mac and Holt for iPhone.

What you copy

Your clips stay on your devices, in a database only Holt reads. Holt for Mac never records copies that password managers mark as private, and skips any app you tell it to ignore.

Holt for Mac also keeps images you copy. It reads the text in them on your Mac, with Apple's text recognizer, so search can find them. The images and their text stay on your devices like any other clip.

Sync

When you pair devices, they connect to each other and sync clips end-to-end encrypted. Only devices you pair can connect, and pairing needs the code shown on your own screen.

To find each other across networks, your devices publish their network address, under a random device id, to a discovery service run by n0, the makers of the open source iroh networking library. When two devices can't reach each other directly, n0's relay servers pass the encrypted traffic along. Neither service can read your clips, and neither knows who you are.

No tracking

Holt has no analytics, no ads, no crash reporting service and no tracking of any kind.

Permissions

On the Mac, Holt reads the clipboard to keep your history, and can paste for you if you allow it. On the iPhone, Holt uses the camera only to scan the pairing code, and the local network only to find and reach your Macs. It reads the clipboard only when you tap Paste or use a Send Clipboard shortcut.

Open source

All of Holt is open source under the MIT license. You can read exactly what it does, or build it yourself, at github.com/snowztech/holt.

Questions

Open an issue on GitHub.