Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux • Hacker News Board

Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

#1

Post by timeoperator » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux
github.com

Re: Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

#2

Post by jdmg94 » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

Great work! does the CLI support clipboard operations like MacOS' `pbcopy` and `pbpaste` ? I've added it to my stars to keep and eye on the project, GTK4 and wayland support makes it rather futureproof IMO

Re: Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

#3

Post by eknkc » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

I thought wayland had some restrictions on global clipboard access and the last time I tried none of the well known clipboard managers worked as expected. (Also they all looked like shit).

This has been one of my pain points switching from macOS to linux or windows. Great job.

Re: Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

#4

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

eknkc wrote: post #3

I thought wayland had some restrictions on global clipboard access and the last time I tried none of the well known clipboard managers worked as expected. (Also they all looked like shit). This has been one of my pain points switching from macOS to linux or windows. Great job.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

#5

Post by hungmung » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC

Linux clipboards have been a pain point to me for decades. What I really want is a single unified clipboard daemon that works across different login sessions and covers console and graphical environments with the same keyboard shortcut. Bonus points if it's got a single-use-paste option for passwords, and also buffers to hold onto multiple selections.

Re: Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

#6

Post by Arnavion » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC

eknkc wrote: post #3

I thought wayland had some restrictions on global clipboard access and the last time I tried none of the well known clipboard managers worked as expected. (Also they all looked like shit). This has been one of my pain points switching from macOS to linux or windows. Great job.

I actually went looking at the source code to see if this would work on Wayland and it doesn't. The clipboard snooping is implemented by listening for events using gdk.Clipboard, which is not an ext_data_control_v1 implementation. So on Wayland it'll only notice clipboard events if it's in focus (or if the compositor sends clipboard events to unfocused windows, which I'm not sure any do).

https://github.com/murat-cileli/clyp/blob/2c0ce6c33813c3f35f...

Edit: Yes, tested it now and it doesn't detect clipboard events from Wayland windows when it doesn't have focus. It only detects events from Xwayland windows when unfocused, or if I copy something from a Wayland window and then focus the clyp window then it detects the thing I copied.

Re: Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

#7

Post by beepbooptheory » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:19 PM UTC

eknkc wrote: post #3

I thought wayland had some restrictions on global clipboard access and the last time I tried none of the well known clipboard managers worked as expected. (Also they all looked like shit). This has been one of my pain points switching from macOS to linux or windows. Great job.

That's interesting.. Never ran into this, been using various clipboard managers in wayland (swaywm at first, now niri) for years without issue. copyq is what I use these days and, while not quite as pretty as this one, its great!

Re: Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

#8

Post by k_roy » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

jdmg94 wrote: post #2

Great work! does the CLI support clipboard operations like MacOS' `pbcopy` and `pbpaste` ? I've added it to my stars to keep and eye on the project, GTK4 and wayland support makes it rather futureproof IMO

For Wayland I just use this:

        alias pbcopy='xsel --clipboard --input'
        alias pbpaste='xsel --clipboard --output'

I used to do the same thing on Xorg with xclip I think

Switching between macOS for job and linux for everything else, I’ve honestly never realized any difference.

Re: Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

#9

Post by bornfreddy » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

One thing that I love about Windows (and there aren't many others) is that pressing Super+V (instead of Ctrl+V) shows a list of last N clipboard entries and you can select which one you wish to paste. Simple and very effective.

You can also pin some entries so that they are permanently available, but that's a bonus.

I haven't seen a clipboard manager behave like that in Linux - can this one be used in a similar way?

Re: Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

#10

Post by mnmalst » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

bornfreddy wrote: post #9

One thing that I love about Windows (and there aren't many others) is that pressing Super+V (instead of Ctrl+V) shows a list of last N clipboard entries and you can select which one you wish to paste. Simple and very effective. You can also pin some entries so that they are permanently available, but that's a bonus. I haven't seen a clipboard manager behave like that in Linux - can this one be used in a similar way?

I use a popup like that myself a lot. Clipman on xfce supports that but no pinning.