Klipo

Cross-platform clipboard manager with end-to-end encrypted sync. Fast, private, keyboard-first — on Windows today, macOS in v0.2.

By bluedev — software & AI business automation studio.

Status: v0.1.3 released. Daily-driver Windows commercial product, $29 lifetime updates on Gumroad. macOS port (Faz C) is next.

Download

Grab the latest signed installer for Windows 10/11 from the Releases page:

• Klipo_<version>_x64-setup.exe — NSIS installer (recommended, ~3.8 MB). Faster install, smaller download, smoother auto-update path.
• Klipo_<version>_x64_en-US.msi — Windows Installer (~5.3 MB). Use this for Group Policy / SCCM / Intune deployment.

Note on SmartScreen: Klipo is currently distributed without an Authenticode (EV) code-signing certificate — the cost was deliberately deferred to keep the indie price ($29 lifetime) sustainable. The installer is signed for auto-update integrity (Ed25519, public key in tauri.conf.json), and the publisher metadata embedded in the NSIS installer reads "bluedev" (right-click installer → Properties → Details to verify). On first install, SmartScreen will show "Unknown publisher" — click More info → Run anyway. The release notes, public changelog, and the bluedev brand at bluedev.dev are the trust anchors until an EV cert is provisioned in a later release.

After installing, press Ctrl+Alt+V anywhere to open Klipo. The 4-step onboarding tour walks through summon, paste, pin/delete, and how to quit.

Why Klipo

The clipboard manager space has a gap that Klipo fills: cross-platform + modern UI + AI-native + offline-first + opt-in E2E sync. Most existing options are platform-locked, paid, or developer-flavored. Klipo aims to feel native on every desktop, keep your data on your machine by default, and earn its place in your daily flow.

What ships in v0.1 (Windows):

• Capture: text · image · file · RTF · HTML, with hash-based dedup
• Search: SQLite FTS5 with Türkçe character folding
• Privacy: 13-pattern sensitive content guard (API keys, credit cards, JWTs); per-app exclusion list with seed for common password managers
• Native OS drag-and-drop from the popup into browser-shell apps (Chromium silently rejects Ctrl+V of file payloads — drag is the only working path)
• Hotkey rebind, theme picker, autostart, wipe-all, full Settings UI
• Auto-update via signed manifest + Tauri-plugin-updater (verified working in production: v0.1.0 → v0.1.1 → v0.1.2 chain)

What it looks like

Captured clipboard	Sensitive content guarded	Polished settings
Ctrl+Alt+V from any app summons the popup. Search filters across kinds; ↑↓ navigates; Enter pastes back.	API keys, credit cards, JWTs and 10+ other patterns get a red left border, blurred preview, and a paste-confirm dialog.	Theme, hotkey rebind, history limit, autostart, signed auto-updates — all in one decorated window.

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How Klipo Works (Daily Use)

Klipo is a headless app — no visible window unless you summon it.

1. It listens in the background. Every Ctrl+C you do anywhere (browser, IDE, terminal, chat app) is captured into a local SQLite database. Sensitive content (API keys, credit cards, JWTs) is flagged with a red border and blurred preview.
2. Summon the popup with Ctrl+Alt+V. It appears on top of the app you were just using. That app stays "the previously focused app" while you interact with Klipo.
3. Search or scroll. Type to filter (FTS5 BM25-ranked); use ↑/↓ to navigate the list.
4. Hit Enter (or click) on a clip. Klipo hides itself, waits ~80 ms for Windows to refocus your previous app, writes the clip to the system clipboard, then synthesizes Ctrl+V so the previous app receives a normal paste.
5. Esc closes the popup without pasting.

How to quit Klipo

Klipo keeps running after you close the popup — that's the whole point of a clipboard manager. To shut it down completely:

• Easy: while the popup is open, press Ctrl+Q.
• Anywhere: find the Klipo icon in the Windows tray (the chevron ▲ next to the system clock; on Win 11 you may need to expand the overflow first), right-click → Quit.
• From Settings: open Settings (gear icon in the popup, or tray right-click → Settings…) → About tab → Quit Klipo button.

How to bring Klipo back after quitting

Quitting kills the process — your hotkey stops responding because nothing is listening for it anymore. To start Klipo again:

• Easiest: Press Win, type Klipo, hit Enter.
• Or: Run %LOCALAPPDATA%\Klipo\Klipo.exe (the path the NSIS installer dropped Klipo into).
• Or: Use Win + R, type klipo, hit Enter.

Within a couple of seconds the tray icon reappears and the hotkey works again.

If you'd rather not think about this every reboot, enable Run at login in Settings → General — Klipo then starts automatically when you sign in to Windows.

"It looked like it duplicated the clip"

It didn't. When Klipo pastes, the OS sees its own clipboard write as a new clipboard event, so the watcher captures it again. But because the SHA-256 hash matches an existing clip, the storage layer bumps the existing row to the top of the list instead of inserting a duplicate. Total clip count stays the same; only the order changes.

Excluded apps (default)

Captures while a known password manager is foreground are dropped silently. The default seed list ships in 001_initial.sql and matches common password manager process names / bundle ids. You can edit the list in M6 (settings UI).

Test it the right way

The popup is most confusing when you summon it from inside the same app you're reading from. To see clearly what's happening:

1. Open Notepad. Click into the editor area.
2. Now press Ctrl+Alt+V. Klipo's popup overlays Notepad.
3. Press Enter (or click) on any clip. The popup hides; Notepad receives a paste of that clip's text.

If you summon the popup from inside the same app you're reading from and click a clip, the paste lands back in that same app — that's correct behaviour, just sometimes surprising.

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Quick Start (developer)

Prerequisites:

• Node.js 20+ and pnpm 9+ (corepack enable && corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate)
• Rust 1.83+ stable toolchain (rustup default stable)
• Windows 10 1809+ (v0.1 builds target Windows; macOS arrives in v0.2)
• WebView2 runtime (preinstalled on Windows 11; Win10 needs the Evergreen installer)

First-run setup:

pnpm install            # frontend deps + tauri CLI
pnpm tauri dev          # opens a 480×600 window saying "Klipo" + IPC ping result

If pnpm tauri dev warns about missing icons, see src-tauri/icons/README.md.

Other useful scripts:

pnpm lint               # ESLint (no warnings allowed)
pnpm typecheck          # TypeScript --noEmit, strict
pnpm test               # Vitest

cd src-tauri
cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo test

Phase A bench (optional, validates SQLite + FTS5 perf budgets):

cd bench
cargo bench --bench sqlite_fts
cargo bench --bench turkish_search

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Principles

1. Offline-first. Every local feature works without internet. Sync is opt-in.
2. Privacy by default. Clipboard data is among the most sensitive a user has. End-to-end encryption is mandatory; neither us nor the server sees content.
3. Fast or not at all. Open <100ms, search <50ms (up to 10K items). Slow = uninstall.
4. Keyboard-first. Mouse is optional; every action has a shortcut.
5. AI helps when it's better. Never auto-pastes AI output without user approval.

Roadmap (Summary)

• v0.1 — MVP (Windows-first): local clipboard history, FTS5 search, pinned items, sensitive-content auto-detect, dark mode, auto-update.
• v0.2 — macOS port + snippets + OCR + command palette.
• v0.3 — E2E sync, AI transforms, multi-device pairing.
• v1.x — Linux, browser extension, plugins.

See docs/ for detailed architecture, security model, and protocol specs.

License

Klipo (v0.1.3 and later) is a commercial product distributed under a proprietary End User License Agreement.

• License terms: LICENSE · LEGAL/EULA.md
• Privacy: LEGAL/PRIVACY.md
• Refund policy: LEGAL/REFUND.md
• Buy a license: Klipo on Gumroad (coming soon)

Earlier versions (v0.1.0 – v0.1.2) remain available under Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE-Apache-2.0-historical.md. Third-party components retain their original open-source licenses; see NOTICE.

Status & Contributing

Pre-1.0. The Windows daily-driver path works end-to-end: capture, search, paste (text / image / file / RTF / HTML), pin, delete, sensitive-content guard, native drag-and-drop, full Settings UI (theme, hotkey rebind, excluded apps, telemetry, wipe-all), and a 3-step welcome tour.

Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a PR. Architecture and budgets you must respect: docs/perf-budget.md, docs/security.md. Vulnerability disclosure: SECURITY.md.

Architecture feedback before code lands → open a discussion.

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Klipo is built and maintained by bluedev — software & AI business automation. Support: support@bluedev.dev.