Smart Clipboard

The system clipboard holds one thing. Smart Clipboard remembers everything you've ever copied — text, screenshots, files — and lets you re-paste any of it without leaving the keyboard.

• ⚡ Native Swift/SwiftUI — single ~5 MB binary, no Electron, no daemon.
• 🔍 Instant search — SQLite FTS5 over thousands of items.
• ⭐ Star items — pins them forever, surfaces them in the menu.
• ⌨️ Global hotkey — default ⌘⇧V, fully rebindable.
• 🖼️ Images & files — full thumbnails, file-reference restore.
• 🛠️ CLI — clip 3 from any terminal pastes the 3rd-most-recent item.
• ☁️ Cloud backup-by-folder — point the JSON export at an iCloud Drive / Dropbox / Google Drive folder.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tech-sumit/SmartClipboard/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Downloads the latest DMG, copies the app to /Applications, removes the macOS quarantine flag, and launches it. No Gatekeeper dialog.

1. Download SmartClipboard-x.y.z.dmg from the latest release.
2. Open the DMG and drag Smart Clipboard into the Applications shortcut.
3. First launch — because the DMG is ad-hoc signed (no Apple Developer ID notarization), macOS Gatekeeper will say "Apple could not verify Smart Clipboard is free of malware". To bypass:
   • macOS 14 Sonoma or earlier: right-click the app in /Applications → Open → Open in the dialog.
   • macOS 15 Sequoia and later: double-click (you'll get the warning), then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → scroll to "Smart Clipboard was blocked" → Open Anyway, enter your password.
   • Or from a terminal (any macOS version):

     xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/SmartClipboard.app
     open /Applications/SmartClipboard.app

4. Look for the clipboard glyph in your menu bar.

Why the friction? Apple requires a paid Apple Developer Program membership (99ドル/year) plus notarization for a frictionless install. The current release DMG is ad-hoc signed only. Notarized release is on the roadmap.

You need Xcode 14+ and XcodeGen.

brew install xcodegen
git clone https://github.com/tech-sumit/SmartClipboard.git
cd SmartClipboard
xcodegen generate
open SmartClipboard.xcodeproj # then ⌘R

...or fully from the command line:

xcodebuild -project SmartClipboard.xcodeproj \
 -scheme SmartClipboard \
 -configuration Release \
 -derivedDataPath .build build
cp -R .build/Build/Products/Release/SmartClipboard.app /Applications/
open /Applications/SmartClipboard.app

The app needs two macOS permissions for full functionality:

Without Accessibility, the picker still works — it just restores items to the clipboard so you can press ⌘V yourself.

┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│ Smart Clipboard │
├─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Open Picker ⌘⇧V │
├─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Starred │
│ ★ TODO: refactor auth module │
│ ★ git rebase -i HEAD~5 │
├─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Recent │
│ 1 https://news.ycombinator.com │
│ 2 📷 Image ×ばつ1080 │
│ 3 📂 Screenshot 2026年05月24日.png │
│ 4 npm run dev │
│ 5 ssh me@10.0.0.42 │
│ ... │
├─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Clear Unstarred History │
│ Settings... ⌘, │
│ Quit Smart Clipboard ⌘Q │
└─────────────────────────────────┘

• Click any item → restores it AND pastes into the previously focused app.
• Option-click → restore only (no paste).
• Top 9 items get ⌘1 ... ⌘9 hotkeys inside the menu.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 🔍 git rebase 42 │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 📄 git rebase -i HEAD~5 TEXT iTerm 2m │
│ 📄 git rebase --autostash TEXT iTerm 8m │
│ 📄 git rebase --onto main ... TEXT Code 1h │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ↩ Paste ⌥↩ Copy only ⎋ Close ⌘F ⭐ ⌘⌫ ✕ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

• Spotlight-style search (SQLite FTS5, fuzzy prefix match on text + file names).
• ↑ / ↓ navigate, ↩ paste, ⌥↩ copy without pasting.
• ⌘F star/unstar, ⌘⌫ delete, ⎋ close.
• Non-activating panel — the app you came from keeps keyboard focus.

$ clip list
1 42 ★ TODO: refactor auth module
2 41 git rebase -i HEAD~5
3 39 https://news.ycombinator.com
4 38 npm run dev
...
$ clip search rebase
1 41 git rebase -i HEAD~5
2 37 git rebase --autostash
$ clip 2
# pastes "git rebase -i HEAD~5" into the current terminal

Install from Settings → CLI → Install (symlinks to /usr/local/bin/clip, or ~/bin/clip if the former isn't writable).

• Settings → Backup → Choose folder picks a destination.
• Export Now writes smartclipboard-backup.json (streamed — won't OOM with thousands of images).
• Auto-export: rewrites the file 30 s after the last clipboard change.
• For free cloud sync, point the folder at:
  • ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/ → iCloud Drive
  • ~/Dropbox/SmartClipboard/ → Dropbox
  • ~/Google Drive/SmartClipboard/ → Google Drive

flowchart LR
 classDef ext fill:#f4f4f8,stroke:#999,stroke-dasharray:3 3,color:#222
 classDef core fill:#eef0ff,stroke:#5E63FF,color:#1d1d1f
 classDef store fill:#dde0ff,stroke:#3437C9,stroke-width:2px,color:#1d1d1f
 PB["NSPasteboard<br/>(system clipboard)"]:::ext
 KEY["⌘⇧V hotkey"]:::ext
 CLI["clip CLI"]:::ext
 SI["NSStatusItem<br/>(menu bar)"]:::ext
 APP["Focused app"]:::ext
 DB[("SQLite + FTS5<br/>~/Library/Application Support/")]:::ext
 CLOUD[("Folder<br/>iCloud / Dropbox / Drive")]:::ext
 subgraph SC ["SmartClipboard.app — single process, LSUIElement"]
 CM["ClipboardMonitor<br/>0.5s poll"]:::core
 HM["HotkeyManager<br/>Carbon RegisterEventHotKey"]:::core
 UH["URLSchemeHandler<br/>smartclipboard://..."]:::core
 MC["MenuBarController<br/>NSMenu rendering"]:::core
 PP["PickerPanel<br/>non-activating NSPanel"]:::core
 PA["Paster<br/>CGEventPost ⌘V"]:::core
 BM["BackupManager<br/>streamed JSON"]:::core
 CR{{"ClipRepository<br/>CRUD + dedup + FTS5"}}:::store
 end
 PB -- "poll changeCount" --> CM --> CR
 KEY --> HM --> PP --> CR
 CLI -- "open URL" --> UH --> CR
 SI --> MC --> CR
 PP --> PA --> APP
 CR <--> DB
 CR --> BM --> CLOUD

sequenceDiagram
 autonumber
 actor U as You
 participant SP as System Pasteboard
 participant CM as ClipboardMonitor
 participant DB as SQLite + FTS5
 participant HK as HotkeyManager
 participant PP as PickerPanel
 participant PR as Paster
 participant App as Focused app
 rect rgba(94,99,255,0.08)
 Note over U,App: Capture (continuous)
 U->>SP: ⌘C (copy)
 CM->>SP: poll every 500 ms
 CM->>CM: payload != self-write fingerprint?
 CM->>DB: INSERT (dedup against latest row)
 end
 rect rgba(94,99,255,0.08)
 Note over U,App: Recall + paste
 U->>HK: ⌘⇧V
 HK->>PP: show() — capture frontmost app
 PP->>DB: FTS5 search as you type
 DB-->>PP: matching ClipItems
 U->>PP: ↩ on item
 PP->>PR: restoreAndPaste(item, activating: App)
 PR->>CM: mark own write (fingerprint)
 PR->>SP: clearContents + setString/Image
 PR->>App: activate
 Note over PR,App: poll isActive up to 200 ms
 PR->>App: CGEventPost ⌘V
 App->>SP: read content
 end

• Storage: ~/Library/Application Support/SmartClipboard/clipboard.sqlite (single file, WAL-mode SQLite + FTS5 virtual table).
• Dedup: identical-to-previous payload bumps created_at instead of inserting.
• Self-write suppression: when we restore an item, the monitor records a fingerprint and skips it on the next poll.
• No daemon: the clip CLI calls open smartclipboard://... — the running app handles the URL via NSApplicationDelegate.application(_:open:).
• Streamed backup: auto-export reads rows 50 at a time and writes incrementally to a temp file, then atomically renames — peak memory stays small even with thousands of multi-MB images.

• Captures everything, including passwords copied from password managers. Items flagged org.nspasteboard.ConcealedType are not filtered. The SQLite DB is unencrypted at rest. Don't auto-export to a public folder.
• Unlimited history — storage grows over time. Use Settings → Data → Clear unstarred to prune.
• The release DMG is ad-hoc signed, not Developer-ID-notarized. macOS Gatekeeper will refuse a normal double-click; right-click → Open the first time.

• Copy text from anywhere → appears in menu bar dropdown.
• Copy an image (⌘⇧4) → appears with thumbnail.
• Copy files in Finder → appears with folder icon.
• ⌘⇧V → picker opens; previous app keeps focus.
• Type to search; ↑↓ to navigate; ↩ pastes into the previously focused app.
• ⌥↩ → copies without pasting.
• ⌘F → star/unstar; ⌘⌫ → delete.
• Quit & relaunch → history persists, hotkey re-registers.
• Settings → rebind hotkey → new hotkey works immediately.
• Settings → Backup → Choose folder → Export Now → JSON appears.
• Settings → CLI → Install → clip list prints items.
• clip 1 pastes the most-recent item into the terminal.

SmartClipboard/
├── project.yml # XcodeGen config
├── docs/superpowers/specs/ # design doc
├── assets/ # icon SVG + iconset + icns
├── bin/clip # CLI shell script
└── SmartClipboard/
 ├── SmartClipboardApp.swift # @main, AppDelegate
 ├── AppState.swift # ObservableObject
 ├── Preferences.swift # UserDefaults wrapper
 ├── CLIInstaller.swift # /usr/local/bin/clip symlink
 ├── Models/ClipItem.swift
 ├── Storage/Database.swift # GRDB + migrations + FTS5
 ├── Storage/ClipRepository.swift # CRUD + search + dedup
 ├── Clipboard/ClipboardMonitor.swift
 ├── Clipboard/Paster.swift
 ├── Hotkey/HotkeyManager.swift # Carbon RegisterEventHotKey
 ├── URLScheme/URLSchemeHandler.swift
 ├── Permissions/PermissionsHelper.swift
 ├── Backup/BackupManager.swift # streamed JSON export
 └── UI/
 ├── MenuBarController.swift
 ├── PickerPanel.swift # non-activating NSPanel
 ├── PickerView.swift
 ├── ItemRow.swift
 └── SettingsView.swift

• CloudKit sync of starred items across Macs.
• Native Google Drive (OAuth + Drive API) sync.
• Optional rich-text / RTF capture.
• Categories / tags / snippet templates.
• Opt-in ConcealedType filtering.
• AES-encrypted DB at rest with passphrase.
• Developer-ID-signed & notarized DMG.

MIT. See LICENSE.

• Built with GRDB.swift for SQLite + FTS5.
• Project scaffolding via XcodeGen.