Clippy

A native clipboard manager for GNOME Linux

Clippy is a lightweight clipboard history manager built natively in Rust using GTK4 and libadwaita. It follows the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines, stores everything locally, and runs quietly in the background.

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Features

Feature	Description
Clipboard history	Captures text and images as you copy, stored locally in SQLite
Live search	Filters clipboard history in real time as you type
Pin items	Pinned entries survive "Clear All"
Image support	Captures and previews images alongside text entries
Global hotkey	Configurable system-wide shortcut to toggle the window (default: Super+V)
Drag and drop	Drag a clipboard entry directly into another app
Deletion with undo panel	Slide-out confirmation before removing an entry
Always on top	Optional window pin to keep Clippy above other windows
Theme aware	Follows your GNOME light/dark color scheme automatically
Settings panel	Configure history limit, hotkey, and autostart from within the app
Autostart	Optionally starts with your GNOME session
Local only	No cloud, no sync, no telemetry

Screenshots

Dark Theme

Light Theme

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Language	Rust
UI toolkit	GTK4 via gtk4-rs
Design system	libadwaita
Database	SQLite via rusqlite
Clipboard access	arboard
Image handling	image
Hashing	sha2
Timestamps	chrono
Global shortcut	GNOME custom-keybinding gsettings schema

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Installation

Prerequisites

Ubuntu / Debian:

sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev pkg-config build-essential

Fedora:

sudo dnf install gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel pkg-config

Install from Source

git clone https://github.com/CharanMunur/Clippy.git
cd Clippy
./install.sh

This builds a release binary, installs it to ~/.local/bin, and registers the app icon and .desktop launcher. To skip autostart:

./install.sh --no-autostart

To uninstall the source installation:

./uninstall.sh

Debian / Ubuntu (.deb) Package

Download the .deb package from the Releases page, or pull it directly from the terminal using wget:

wget https://github.com/CharanMunur/Clippy/releases/download/v0.1.0/clippy_0.1.0_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./clippy_0.1.0_amd64.deb
rm clippy_0.1.0_amd64.deb

To uninstall:

sudo apt remove clippy

Fedora / RHEL (.rpm) Package

Download the .rpm package from the Releases page, or pull it directly from the terminal using wget:

wget https://github.com/CharanMunur/Clippy/releases/download/v0.1.0/clippy-0.1.0-1.x86_64.rpm
sudo dnf install ./clippy-0.1.0-1.x86_64.rpm
rm clippy-0.1.0-1.x86_64.rpm

To uninstall:

sudo dnf remove clippy

Running Locally (Development)

cargo run

Run as a background process with no window:

cargo run -- --background

Toggle the window from a terminal or custom shortcut:

cargo run -- --toggle

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Project Structure

clippy/
├── src/
│   ├── main.rs       # App entry point, window builder, CSS, menu actions
│   ├── ui.rs         # Row layout, clipboard operations, list rendering
│   ├── settings.rs   # Settings view, autostart toggle, hotkey config
│   ├── hotkey.rs     # GNOME gsettings custom keybinding writer
│   ├── poller.rs     # Background clipboard polling thread
│   └── db.rs         # SQLite schema, CRUD, config store
├── icons/            # Custom symbolic SVG icons
├── assets/           # App icon
├── install.sh
├── uninstall.sh
└── clippy.desktop

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Keyboard Shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
Toggle Clippy window	Super + J (configurable in Settings)
Copy item	Left-click on an entry
Pin / unpin item	Click the pin icon on an entry
Open item actions	Click the menu icon on an entry
Delete item	Open actions, then click delete

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Configuration

Configuration is stored in the local SQLite database at ~/.local/share/clippy/clippy.db, under a config table. From the Settings panel inside the app you can change:

• Global hotkey
• History limit
• Autostart on login

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License

Available under the MIT License.