PasteBar – Limitless, Free Clipboard Manager for Mac and Windows. Open Source | Hacker News Reader

PasteBar – Limitless, Free Clipboard Manager for Mac and Windows. Open Source

github.com

35 pointsPasteBar_App9 comments

PasteBar is a feature-rich, free clipboard manager that leverages a web stack to create a native-like experience using Tauri App (Rust). It's built with Tailwind CSS, drag-and-drop actions, and custom React UI components, providing a seamless and efficient integration with the OS. The big advantage of using a web stack for UI is that you can visually create the same look and feel for both Mac and Windows. I am very proud to have achieved that with PasteBar.

As a lifelong web developer, I always dreamt of creating a native app using familiar web technologies. When I couldn't find a decent clipboard manager that met my needs, I decided to build my own. PasteBar has the unique ability to create native menus with instant paste actions that I could not find in any other app or service. It's free, open source, and packed with features like:

- Unlimited clipboard history - Searchable copy history - Custom saved clips - Quick-access paste menus - Collections, tabs, and boards for organization - Local storage for privacy and security - Lock screen and passcode protection - Support for text, images, files, links, and code snippets - Instant pasting from system menu - Dark theme - Global search functionality - Customizable clips and menus

Check out PasteBar in action at https://www.pastebar.app or explore the source code on GitHub at https://github.com/PasteBar/PasteBarApp

Available for macOS and Windows (including Apple Silicon M1, Intel, AMD, and ARM processors)

I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback! Thank you!

> leverages a web stack to create a native-like experience

Biggest contradiction if I ever heard one ;-)

Note: your non-www domain is non-functional (invalid DNS record?)

The app seems pretty featured, nice work! I think I will keep using Ditto though, it does enough for me.

With the tauri backend, do you have plans to support Linux machines? If not, what is the limiting factor?

Unfortunately, I could not find a way to recreate some of my core functionality like direct paste from task menu or the app to other apps or shell. It required root access in many Linux distributions like Ubuntu, so I could not find a way to overcome this limitation. Maybe somebody can help and create a PR in the future to point me in the right direction, but yeah, good question. Thank you.

I wonder if you were testing on Wayland? Did it work on X11?

I think it was working on X11 but not on Wayland. I could not remember now, it was some time ago and I am not an expert on Linux.

If I remember correctly, this lib required root access to emulate key presses: https://github.com/PasteBar/PasteBarApp/tree/main/src-tauri/...

Nice, now dream a text-centric desktop where almost all your digital life is in notes, you can attach files anywhere and link them, access all information with full-text search, search&narrow style, with various filter, composing and decomposing, copy-pasting abilities etc.

Well, on one historical side you discovered the Libraries of Babel, by Conrad Gessner (circa 1545) on the other Emacs/EXWM as desktop, org-mode/org-roam managed notes with gazillion of packages around.

That's not a critic to PasteBar project, but an observation on who many independent people, typically not knowing "paste solutions" like Emacs, re-invent single aspects already invented decades ago because they are effective and useful and they still fall short in full scale integration because modern systems are not meant to be fully integrated environments. PasteBar is nice, it's just an example of how much we need text and how poor are modern environments, and how much effort is needed in them to do even the most simple thing like having a handful of ready-made snippets to be inserted somewhere comparing to just yasnippet or tempo in complexity and effort terms.

How much RAM does your program consume on each of the platforms?

PasteBar does not consume much RAM on each platform, especially if you close the main window and keep only the background process running to capture clipboard history. I think the total number depends on your history database or the number of saved clips. Additionally, because PasteBar is built using Tauri rather than Electron, it benefits from a significantly lower memory footprint, ensuring better performance and efficiency on your system.

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