Clipback

A lightweight, native, and privacy-first clipboard manager for macOS.

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📖 Overview

Clipback is a modern macOS clipboard history manager built with pure SwiftUI and AppKit. Designed with speed, aesthetics, and privacy in mind, Clipback runs seamlessly in your menu bar with a Raycast/Spotlight-style floating HUD, giving you instant access to your copied texts, rich formatting, images, color codes, URLs, and files.

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✨ Features

• 📋 Multi-Format Clipboard History:

  • Plain Text: Captures all plain text clips.
  • Rich Text: Retains formatted text (RTF / HTML).
  • Images: Stores and displays image thumbnails (PNG, JPEG, TIFF) with quick previews.
  • Color Codes: Automatically detects HEX, RGB, and HSL formats with interactive color swatches.
  • Links & Files: Categorizes web links (http/https) and local file references.

• 🔍 Instant Search & Type Filtering:

  • Real-time search by keyword or substring.
  • Quickly filter items by type (All, Text, Rich Text, Images, Colors, Links, Files).
  • Dedicated view for pinned favorites.

• ⚡ Global Hotkey & Direct Paste:

  • Summon the floating panel anytime with a customizable system-wide shortcut (default: ⌘ + Shift + V).
  • Automatically paste the selected item directly into the active application via macOS Accessibility API.

• 🔒 Privacy & Password Manager Concealment:

  • Automatically respects privacy markers (org.nspasteboard.ConcealedType, org.nspasteboard.AutoGeneratedType, TransientType).
  • Ignores data copied from password managers such as 1Password, Bitwarden, KeePassXC, and macOS Keychain.
  • Exclude specific applications by Bundle ID.
  • One-click pause/resume clipboard monitoring.

• 👁️ On-Device OCR (Live Text):

  • Powered by Apple's Vision framework to extract text from copied images locally without sending data to external servers.

• 📷 QR Code Scanner:

  • Detects and decodes QR codes embedded within copied images automatically, allowing you to copy decoded URLs or content directly.

• 🎨 Modern Native Design:

  • Floating HUD window with native macOS frosted glass vibrancy (NSVisualEffectView).
  • Menu bar integration with adaptive color or monochrome icons.

• 📌 Pinning & History Retention Management:

  • Pin important clips to prevent them from being removed.
  • Retention policies: by item count (up to 1,000 items) or duration (up to 90 days).
  • Optional storage quota limit (MB).

• 🌐 Multilingual Support:

  • English and Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt).

• 🚀 System Integration:

  • Launch at login support via SMAppService.
  • Built-in GitHub release update checker.

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⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
⌘ + Shift + V	Toggle Clipback Floating Panel (configurable)
↑ / ↓	Navigate clipboard items
Return	Copy & paste selected item to active app
⌘ + C	Copy selected item to clipboard without pasting
⌘ + P	Pin / Unpin selected item
⌘ + ⌫	Delete selected item from history
⌘ + ,	Open Preferences / Settings
Esc	Close floating HUD

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📋 Requirements

• Operating System: macOS 14.6 (Sonoma) or later (macOS Sequoia compatible)
• Architecture: Universal (Apple Silicon arm64 & Intel x86_64)
• Permissions:
  • Accessibility: Required for simulating paste events (⌘ + V) into target applications.

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🛠️ Installation & Building

Install via Homebrew

brew tap nhanchaukp/tap
brew install --cask clipback

Build from Source

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/nhanchaukp/clipback.git
   cd Clipback

2. Open in Xcode:

   open Clipback.xcodeproj

3. Build & Run:

   • Select the Clipback scheme.
   • Press ⌘ + R to build and run the app.

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🏗️ Architecture & Tech Stack

Clipback is crafted with clean separation of concerns and modern Swift concurrency:

• UI Framework: SwiftUI + AppKit for native macOS performance.
• Image Analysis: Vision for on-device OCR and QR code detection.
• Shortcuts: Carbon APIs for system-wide global key listening.
• Background Service: SMAppService for login item management.
• Event Simulation: Quartz Event Services (CGEvent) for seamless auto-paste.

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome! Feel free to check the issues page.

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Copyright © 2024–2026 nhanchaukp (Châu Thái Nhân). All rights reserved.