CLIPBOARD · DESKTOP · RUST

clipman — your clipboard,
searchable and private.

A fast, cross-platform clipboard manager that remembers everything you copy and keeps it encrypted on your own machine. Search your full history instantly, paste from anywhere, and never ship a single byte to a cloud or sync server.

bash
# run the background daemon
clipman daemon --encrypt

# open the history picker (bind to a hotkey)
clipman pick
// THE PROBLEM

The clipboard forgets, or it spies

The system clipboard holds exactly one item and loses it the moment you copy the next. Most "clipboard history" tools fix that by syncing your copies — passwords, tokens, snippets — through a cloud you don't control. clipman keeps the convenience without the trade-off: a persistent, searchable history that lives entirely on your device, encrypted at rest, with a footprint small enough to forget it's running.

// CAPABILITIES

What clipman does

Instant fuzzy history search

Type a few characters to find any past copy — text, links, code, or images — and paste it back in a keystroke. No scrolling through a stack.

Encrypted on-disk storage

History is written to an encrypted local database, so sensitive copies aren't sitting in plaintext on disk. Nothing leaves your machine — there is no account and no sync.

Sub-1 MB idle footprint

Written in Rust as a lean daemon, clipman sits near a megabyte of memory when idle — light enough to run on every machine without a second thought.

Native Wayland / Hyprland

First-class support for modern Linux compositors, plus cross-platform desktop builds via Tauri — so it feels native wherever you run it.

Pin, filter & auto-expire

Pin the snippets you reuse, exclude apps you don't want recorded, and let old entries expire on a schedule so the history stays relevant.

Keyboard-driven workflow

Bind the picker to a global hotkey and drive everything from the keyboard — built for people who don't want to reach for the mouse to paste.

// HOW IT WORKS

A daemon, an encrypted store, and a picker

1

Watch

A lightweight background daemon listens for clipboard changes through native compositor APIs and captures each new copy without polling.

2

Encrypt & store

Every entry is written to an encrypted on-disk database with its type and metadata, so history survives reboots while staying protected at rest.

3

Search

The picker opens on your hotkey with a fuzzy search box over the full history — text, images, and links — ranked by recency and pins.

4

Paste

Select an entry and clipman restores it to the system clipboard and pastes into the focused app — all without your data ever leaving the machine.

// AT A GLANCE

Technical profile

Language
Rust — compiled daemon with a sub-1 MB idle footprint
Shell
Tauri for lightweight cross-platform desktop builds
Platforms
Native Wayland / Hyprland, plus Linux / macOS / Windows builds
Storage
Encrypted on-disk database — no cloud, no account, no sync
Control
Global hotkey picker, pins, per-app exclusions, auto-expiry
License
MIT — auditable and free to self-host
Rust Tauri Wayland Encrypted
// GET STARTED

Take your clipboard back

Install the daemon, bind a hotkey, and never lose a copy again — privately, on your own hardware.

github.com/alikaya/clipman