Pinza Download
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Getting started

This tutorial takes you from download to your first copied link. It takes about five minutes, most of which is macOS asking for permission.

What you need

  • A Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or newer. Pinza is a universal binary and runs natively on Apple silicon and Intel.
  • That's it. No account, no sign-up.

Install Pinza

  1. Download Pinza from pinza.app/download.
  2. Open the downloaded disk image and drag Pinza to your Applications folder.
  3. Open Pinza. It appears as a paperclip icon in your menu bar — there is no Dock icon and no main window. That's normal.
close-up of the right side of the menu bar with Pinza's paperclip icon circled or highlighted, so new users know what to look for.

On first launch, Pinza shows a short onboarding that walks you through everything on this page: the apps it detected on your Mac, the keyboard shortcut, and the permissions. If you skipped it, you can bring it back anytime under Settings → General → Show onboarding again.

the onboarding welcome panel — the first step with the step indicator at the top, so users recognize the flow this tutorial mirrors.

Grant the two permissions

Pinza reads the frontmost app the moment you press the shortcut — and macOS rightly wants your consent for that. Two permissions are involved.

Accessibility

This is how Pinza knows which window you're looking at and reads its title or selection.

  1. During onboarding, click Open System Settings. (Or go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility yourself.)
  2. Toggle Pinza on.
System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility with Pinza in the app list and its toggle switched on — ideally with an arrow or highlight on the toggle.

Automation

The first time Pinza asks a particular app for its URL or file path, macOS shows a one-time dialog: "Pinza" wants access to control "Safari". Click OK. You'll see this once per app, not every time.

the macOS Automation consent dialog — “Pinza” wants access to control “Safari” — with the OK button visible, so users know this dialog is expected and safe.

If you click Don't Allow by accident, fix it under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation — see Troubleshooting.

Meet your two shortcuts

Pinza has exactly two global shortcuts. They work everywhere, no matter which app is focused:

  • The Copy shortcut — copies the most useful reference from the app you're in.
  • The Recents shortcut — opens your list of recent pins.

Onboarding suggests a shortcut when you set Pinza up. To check or change what yours are, open Settings → Shortcuts. The rest of this documentation simply says "your Copy shortcut" and "your Recents shortcut".

Settings → Shortcuts: the two shortcut recorders (Copy Link and Open Recents) with their current key combinations visible.
  1. Open Safari (or any browser) and go to any page.
  2. Press your Copy shortcut.
  3. A small card appears near the bottom of your screen: the page title, its URL, and a confirmation that it's on your clipboard. This card is the HUD.
the HUD immediately after copying a Safari tab — collapsed card with the site's favicon, page title, and URL. Shot against a light desktop so the card pops.
  1. Switch to Mail, Notes, or a chat and paste. The URL is there.

Now try the same in Finder: select a file and press the Copy shortcut. Pinza copies the file's path, ready to paste into a Terminal window, a save dialog, or a message. Every app copies whatever is most useful for that app — Supported apps lists what you get where.

What just happened

Each copy becomes a pin: an entry in Pinza's history with the title, the link or path, and a preview. Pins are how you get back to things later. They're stored on your Mac in an encrypted database, and the free version keeps your latest 25.

Reopen something

  1. Press your Recents shortcut, or click the paperclip icon in the menu bar.
  2. Your recent pins appear, newest first.
  3. Select one and press ↩ to open it — the browser tab, the file, the mail message.
the recents popover open under the menu bar icon with a handful of varied pins (a web page, a file, a mail message) and one selected, its hover tooltip showing.

That's the loop: copy with one shortcut, return with the other.

Where to go next

  • Example use cases — ten practical things to try first.
  • The HUD — the card you just saw can do much more than confirm.
  • Integrations — connect Notion, Google Drive, Raindrop.io, and others.