Text Tray

July 9, 2026 · View on GitHub

Text Tray is a tiny macOS temporary text tray for the moments when opening a full text editor, Notes window, AI tool, or translation app is too much.

It is designed for quick, disposable text work: view copied text in a larger editable window, check basic counts, clean up simple text problems, run lightweight local AI actions, use system Writing Tools or translation when available, then copy or save the result and move on.

中文说明

Text Tray overview

Why

Sometimes you only need to inspect a piece of text for a few seconds:

the copied text is too small to read comfortably in the source app
opening a full text editor feels heavy for a temporary note
Apple Notes is too small or too persistent for throwaway text
using another AI or translation tool means too many copy, paste, process, copy steps
you just want to know character count, word count, line count, or cursor position
you need a quick cleanup before copying or saving the text

Text Tray gives that temporary text a dedicated, lightweight place.

Features

Temporary Text Tray

Open a clean, focused window for copied or passed-in text
Use it as a temporary reading and editing space instead of opening a full editor
Keep the window floating when you want it above other apps
Reload the current clipboard when you need to replace the temporary text

Reading, Editing, and Counting

Edit, select, scroll, undo, redo, and search text
Show line numbers and word wrap
Adjust font size
See character count, word count, line count, selection length, font size, and cursor position

Quick Text Cleanup

Trim leading and trailing whitespace
Remove extra blank lines
Normalize line endings
Remove trailing spaces on each line
Repair common PDF line breaks
Undo the last text processing operation

Copy, Save, and Print

Copy the whole text when you are done
Save text as .txt, .md, .json, .csv, .html, .swift, .py, .js, or a custom extension
Use timestamped default file names such as Text_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.txt
Print the current text

Smart Assistance

Extract tasks, dates, amounts, and contacts
Summarize requirements, explain text, check risks, draft replies, and organize text into checklists or tables
Use system Apple Intelligence writing assistance when available
Translate to Chinese, translate to English, or create a bilingual version when system translation is available

Preferences

Remember language, pinning, font size, line numbers, word wrap, and statistics display
Keep text temporary: preferences are saved, text content is not

Text Tray does not save your text automatically, keep clipboard history, monitor the clipboard in the background, upload content, or clear the system clipboard.

Screenshots

PDF Line Break Cleanup

PDF line break repair

AI Text Actions

Use the app's AI menu for quick structured operations such as extracting tasks or dates from temporary text.

Before extraction:

Example email before AI extraction

Task extraction:

AI task extraction

Date extraction:

AI date extraction

open -n "/Applications/Text Tray.app"

You can also pass text directly:

APP="/Applications/Text Tray.app"
printf '%s' "$SHORTCUT_INPUT" | "$APP/Contents/MacOS/TemporaryClipboardViewer" --stdin

Build From Source

Requirements:

macOS 13 or later
Xcode Command Line Tools
Swift compiler

Build:

./scripts/build.sh

Output:

build/Text Tray.app
releases/TextTray.zip

The build script creates a normal .app bundle and packages it as TextTray.zip.

Privacy

Text Tray is intentionally local and temporary.

No database
No clipboard history
No automatic saving of text
No network requests for local text processing
No background clipboard monitoring
No clipboard clearing on close
Clipboard is only modified when you explicitly copy text

Preferences such as language, font size, line numbers, word wrap, statistics display, and pinning are stored with UserDefaults. Text content is not stored.

License

MIT