History and storage

Pasta saves everything you copy: text, links, code, rich text, images and files. By default it keeps all of it, forever. Text is tiny, and older images move to the cloud so your disk stays light.

History Retention

Settings → General → History Retention decides how long Pasta keeps items. The default is Unlimited. You can also pick 1 Day, 7 Days, 30 Days or 1 Year.

How cleanup works:

• When Pasta starts, and again as it syncs, it deletes items older than your retention window.
• They’re deleted on this Mac. When you’re signed in, they’re also deleted from our server and from your other Macs.

Choosing a shorter window deletes older items for good, so pick carefully.

Full Copies on This Mac

When you’re signed in, every synced item has a card on every Mac: its labels and the first 2,000 characters of its text. That’s enough to see and search your whole history, even offline.

Settings → General → Full Copies on This Mac decides how many of your newest items also keep their complete copy here. The default is Everything. You can also pick 100, 200, 500, 1,000 or 10,000 items.

For items beyond that number, long text and rich text live only in the cloud, encrypted. Pasta downloads them again the moment you open or paste one. Nothing is lost; it just takes a beat longer.

When you’re not signed in, this setting is called Keep at Most, and items beyond the number are deleted.

Images

Screenshots add up fast, so images follow their own, smaller limits whatever you choose above:

• The newest 50 full-size images stay on your Mac, so pasting a screenshot you just took is instant.
• Thumbnails for the newest 1,000 items stay on your Mac.
• Older images and thumbnails live in the cloud, encrypted, and download when you open or paste them.

Storage used

Settings → Storage shows how much space Pasta uses on this Mac: the history database plus the images, long items and thumbnails stored here. Copies kept only in the cloud don’t count.

Delete items

• To delete one card, select it and press ⌫, or click its trash button. Select several to delete them together. Pasta asks first.
• To delete everything, use Settings → Storage → Clear History. It removes your whole history from this Mac, and when you’re signed in, from our server and your other Macs too. This can’t be undone.

Want to stop syncing but keep your history on this Mac? See Delete Synced Data in Sync and encryption.