Skip to main content

📋 Smart Clipboard Manager

Python License Platform Status

A powerful clipboard manager with history, search, and smart categorization features.

🚀 Quick Install • 📖 Features • 🎯 Usage • ⚙️ Configuration


✨ Features

🎯 Core Features

  • 📋 Clipboard History: Automatically saves your last 1000 clipboard entries
  • 🔍 Smart Search: Full-text search across all clipboard history
  • 🏷️ Auto-Categorization: Automatically detects URLs, emails, code, file paths, and more
  • ⭐ Favorites: Pin frequently used clips for quick access
  • 🔒 Privacy Protection: Automatically excludes sensitive content from password managers
  • 🎯 Deduplication: Doesn't store identical content twice
  • ⌨️ Global Hotkey: Quick access with Ctrl+Alt+V
  • 🔄 Auto-Refresh: Shows newly copied items immediately

🎨 User Interface

  • Modern UI: Clean, intuitive interface with dark/light theme support
  • Click-to-Copy: Single click on any item to copy it to clipboard
  • Real-time Updates: See new clipboard items appear instantly
  • Smart Filtering: Filter by content type (URLs, Code, Favorites, etc.)
  • Preview Panel: Full content preview with syntax highlighting for code

🛡️ Security & Privacy

  • Local Storage: All data stored locally in SQLite database
  • No Cloud Sync: By default, no data leaves your machine
  • App Exclusion: Automatically excludes clipboard content from password managers
  • Sensitive Content Detection: Detects and optionally excludes passwords, credit cards, etc.

🚀 Quick Install

Option 1: Install via pipx (Recommended)

# Install pipx if you don't have it
sudo apt install pipx
pipx ensurepath

# Install from PyPI
pipx install linux-clipboard-manager

Option 2: Install from source

# Install from GitHub
pipx install git+https://github.com/krakujs/linux-clipboard-manager.git

Option 3: One-Click System Installation

# Download and run the installation script (installs system dependencies + app)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/krakujs/linux-clipboard-manager/master/install-system.sh | bash

🎯 Usage

After Installation

  1. Start the Application: Run smart-clipboard in a terminal to start the background service
  2. Open the UI: Press Ctrl+Alt+V to toggle the clipboard manager window (while service is running)
  3. Or Open GUI Directly: Run smart-clipboard-gui to open just the UI
  4. Copy Items: Click on any item to copy it to your clipboard
  5. Search: Type in the search box to filter clipboard history
  6. Filter by Type: Click buttons to filter by content type (All, URLs, Code, Favorites)

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut Action
Ctrl+Alt+V Toggle clipboard manager window
Enter Paste selected clip
Escape Close window
Double-click Paste selected clip

Command Line Usage

# Start background service (monitors clipboard + hotkey)
smart-clipboard

# Open GUI only (no background monitoring)
smart-clipboard-gui

# Start with UI visible
smart-clipboard --show-ui

⚙️ Configuration

The configuration file is located at: ~/.smart-clipboard/config.json

Default Configuration

{
  "max_history": 1000,
  "monitor_interval": 0.5,
  "hotkey": "<ctrl>+<alt>+v",
  "database_path": "clipboard.db",
  "max_content_size": 1048576,
  "enable_encryption": false,
  "excluded_apps": ["KeePass", "1Password", "LastPass"],
  "categories": {
    "url": true,
    "email": true,
    "code": true,
    "image": true
  },
  "ui": {
    "max_preview_length": 100,
    "window_width": 600,
    "window_height": 400,
    "theme": "light"
  }
}

Customizing the Hotkey

Edit the hotkey field in config.json. Examples:

  • <ctrl>+<alt>+v (default)
  • <ctrl>+<shift>+c
  • <cmd>+<shift>+v (macOS)

📦 System Requirements

Linux

  • Python 3.7 or higher
  • pip (Python package manager)
  • System dependencies:
    sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3-venv python3-full sqlite3 xdotool
    

Other Platforms

  • Windows: Additional pywin32 and psutil packages required
  • macOS: No additional dependencies needed (uses built-in AppleScript)

🔧 Development

Setting up Development Environment

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/your-username/smart-clipboard-manager.git
cd smart-clipboard-manager

# Create virtual environment
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Run the application
python main.py

Running Tests

# Install test dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Run tests
pytest tests/

# Run with coverage
pytest --cov=src tests/

Project Structure

smart-clipboard-manager/
├── src/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── clipboard_monitor.py    # Background clipboard monitoring
│   ├── storage.py               # SQLite storage engine
│   ├── ui.py                    # Tkinter GUI interface
│   ├── hotkey_handler.py        # Global hotkey management
│   ├── content_analyzer.py      # Content categorization
│   └── config.py                # Configuration management
├── tests/                       # Test suite
├── requirements.txt             # Python dependencies
├── setup.py                     # Package configuration
├── install-system.sh           # System installation script
├── main.py                      # Application entry point
└── README.md                    # This file

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guidelines for details.

How to Contribute

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
  5. Open a Pull Request

📝 License

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


🙏 Acknowledgments

  • pyperclip for cross-platform clipboard access
  • pynput for global hotkey handling
  • Tkinter for the GUI framework

📞 Support


🔄 Changelog

v1.0.1 (2024-11-05)

  • 🔧 Changed hotkey from Ctrl+Shift+V to Ctrl+Alt+V to avoid conflicts
  • 📚 Updated documentation with new hotkey information
  • 🐛 Fixed hotkey collision issues with other applications

v1.0.0 (2024-11-05)

  • ✨ Initial release
  • 📋 Clipboard history with 1000 item limit
  • 🔍 Full-text search functionality
  • 🏷️ Smart content categorization
  • ⭐ Favorites system
  • ⌨️ Global hotkey support
  • 🔄 Auto-refresh functionality
  • 🖥️ Modern UI with click-to-copy
  • 🔧 System service integration
  • 📦 Easy installation scripts

Made with ❤️ for productivity enthusiasts

⭐ Star this repo • 🐛 Report issues • 💬 Start a discussion

Metadata

Release files for linux-clipboard-manager 1.1.3

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for linux-clipboard-manager 1.1.3
File Size Uploaded
linux_clipboard_manager-1.1.3.tar.gz 23.3 kB Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for linux-clipboard-manager 1.1.3
File Interpreter ABI Platform
linux_clipboard_manager-1.1.3-py3-none-any.whl Python 3 none any Details

Total release size: 45.2 kB

Release files / linux_clipboard_manager-1.1.3.tar.gz

Download URL linux_clipboard_manager-1.1.3.tar.gz
Size 23.3 kB
Tags Source
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
41f9f6b69f6d0f009d1b0d8d3975b94bc3b1f54f15766c9f94e19fe8de9e823e
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
08fd3d3b5de5a35fc677dd75bd6057c60df34e63a7ed8c5174a2ef2a9f93b063
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.13.7

Provenance

Provenance describes where a file came from. On PyPI, provenance is shared via attestations, which provide a verifiable record of the build or publishing details. View details, limitations and caveats.

PyPI Publish Attestation

PyPI verified that this artifact, at this checksum, originated from the publisher listed below.

Signed by GitHub Actions, verified by PyPI on Nov 5, 2025.

Transparency log

Release files / linux_clipboard_manager-1.1.3-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL linux_clipboard_manager-1.1.3-py3-none-any.whl
Size 21.9 kB
Tags Python 3
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
72851c4744b1c0eb8d23c6f859d0d1d041ee876b01938afb36a9b333415f2fbf
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
91d1889aaf9eba3b39b9d055114e147ab4f0728d2a9a5e0ea53d9782fcb4223d
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
Yes
Uploaded via twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.13.7

Provenance

Provenance describes where a file came from. On PyPI, provenance is shared via attestations, which provide a verifiable record of the build or publishing details. View details, limitations and caveats.

PyPI Publish Attestation

PyPI verified that this artifact, at this checksum, originated from the publisher listed below.

Signed by GitHub Actions, verified by PyPI on Nov 5, 2025.

Transparency log

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

This release

1.1.3 This release

2 release files

1.1.2

2 release files

1.1.1

2 release files

1.1.0

2 release files

1.0.7

2 release files

Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page