CopyIT — ClipboardManager

Native macOS menu bar clipboard manager. Open source, MIT-licensed.

Features (v1.0)

• Lives in the menu bar — no Dock icon, no ⌘Tab clutter (LSUIElement).
• Tracks the last 50 clipboard entries (text, URLs, and images).
• Search with live filtering, case-insensitive.
• Keyboard navigation: arrows to move, ↩ to copy, ⌫ to delete, esc to close.
• Global hotkey ⌥Space to toggle the popover from anywhere.
• Right-click the status bar icon for quick actions (Open, Clear, Quit).
• Launches at login (SMAppService).
• Persists history metadata in UserDefaults and image payloads in Application Support.

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap PinnLabs/tap
brew install --cask copyit

Manual download

1. Grab the latest CopyIT-x.y.z.zip from Releases.

2. Unzip and drag ClipboardManager.app to /Applications.

3. First launch — right-click → Open to bypass Gatekeeper (the app is ad-hoc signed), or run:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/ClipboardManager.app

4. Grant Input Monitoring permission when prompted (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring) so ⌥Space works.

Build from source

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Requirements

• macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later
• Xcode 15+ (Swift 5.9+) — only needed if building from source
• XcodeGen — only needed if building from source

Quick start

brew install xcodegen
make setup           # generates Xcode project
make run             # build + launch
make test            # run unit tests

Or open in Xcode after make generate and use ⌘R / ⌘U.

Permissions

The global hotkey relies on CGEventTap, which requires Input Monitoring permission. On first launch macOS prompts to grant access — open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring and enable ClipboardManager.

Project structure

ClipboardManager/
├── App/                  # Entry point + AppDelegate (composition root)
├── Core/
│   ├── Protocols/        # ClipboardMonitoring, ClipboardStoring,
│   │                     # HotkeyRegistering, LaunchAtLoginManaging
│   ├── Models/           # ClipboardItem, ClipboardItemType
│   ├── Services/         # ClipboardMonitor, HotkeyManager,
│   │                     # LaunchAtLoginService, AppLogger
│   └── UseCases/         # Fetch, Copy, Delete, Clear
├── UI/
│   ├── StatusBar/        # NSStatusItem + NSPopover + right-click menu
│   └── Popover/          # SwiftUI views + @Observable PopoverViewModel
├── Infrastructure/
│   └── Persistence/      # UserDefaultsStore (concrete ClipboardStoring)
└── Resources/            # Info.plist, Assets.xcassets, entitlements
Tests/
├── CoreTests/            # Store, monitor, use cases, hotkey, launch-at-login
│   └── Mocks/            # Protocol-conforming mocks
└── UITests/              # PopoverViewModel

Architecture

Clean Architecture + SOLID. The composition root is AppDelegate.applicationDidFinishLaunching(_:) — the only place that wires concrete implementations. UI never touches NSPasteboard or UserDefaults directly.

[ClipboardMonitor] --onNewItem--> [AppDelegate] --save--> [Store]
                                       |
                                       v
                                  [ViewModel] --refresh--> SwiftUI
                                       ^
[HotkeyManager] --⌥Space--> [StatusBar] --togglePopover-->|

Logging uses OSLog.Logger exposed via AppLogger.<category>.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.