PastePaw is a clipboard history manager designed to efficiently organize, search, and manage your clipboard content. Built with Rust + Tauri + React, it offers seamless performance and a modern user experience.
Key Features:
Automatic Clipboard Saving: Continuously records all copied content for easy access later.
Advanced Search Functionality: Quickly locate past clips using keyword searches.
Customizable Folders: Organize clips into personal or project-specific folders.
AI-Powered Actions: Summarize, translate, and analyze clipboard content with integrated AI tools.
Multi-Monitor Support: Displays the application on your active monitor for optimal workflow.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for productivity-focused users who need quick access to past clipboard content. PastePaw helps save time by eliminating the need to retype or re-copy frequently used information, while its organizational features keep clips neatly arranged for efficient retrieval.
Install PastePaw via winget for a seamless experience.
> 🔍 Security: Every release is automatically scanned with VirusTotal (70+ antivirus engines). Scan results are linked at the bottom of each release note.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Global
Toggle Window: Ctrl+Shift+V (Default, Customizable in Settings)
In-App
Ctrl + F - Focus search
Escape - Close window / Clear search
Enter - Paste selected item
Delete - Delete selected item
P - Pin/Unpin selected item
Arrow Up/Down - Navigate items
Application Exceptions (Ignored Apps)
PastePaw allows you to exclude specific applications from being recorded in the clipboard history. This is useful for privacy-sensitive applications like password managers or banking apps.
(You need to provide the API Key for the AI provider)
Logic & Behavior:
How to manage: Go to Settings -> Ignored Applications. You can browse for an executable (.exe) or strictly type its name.
Privacy Protection: When content is copied, PastePaw checks the source application against your ignore list.
Robust Matching: The system checks against both:
Executable Name (e.g., notepad.exe) - Matches any instance of this app regardless of location.
Full File Path (e.g., C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe) - Matches only the specific installed instance.
Case Insensitive: Matching is case-insensitive to ensure reliable detection on Windows.
AI Features
PastePaw integrates powerful AI capabilities to help you process your clipboard content more efficiently.
Actions: Right-click any clip to access AI actions:
Summarize: Get a concise summary of long texts.
Translate: Translate content to your preferred language.
Failure to follow this convention (e.g., passing snake_case from the frontend) will result in arguments being passed as null or None to the backend.
Window Behavior & Multi-Monitor Support
The application is designed to appear on the active monitor (the one containing the mouse cursor) whenever the global hotkey is pressed.
Detection Logic:
Located in src-tauri/src/lib.rs (animate_window_show).
Uses the Windows API GetCursorPos (via the windows crate) to determine the global mouse coordinates.
Iterates through window.available_monitors() to find the monitor whose bounds contain the cursor point.
Fallback: If the cursor position cannot be determined, it defaults to window.current_monitor().
Positioning:
The window is positioned at the bottom of the detected active monitor's work area (excluding taskbar).
An animation slides the window up from the bottom edge.
Adjusting the Layout
The application uses a centralized layout system to ensure the native window and the virtualized list remain synchronized.
Backend Constants:src-tauri/src/constants.rs (Controls the OS window size).
Frontend Constants:frontend/src/constants.ts (Controls UI rendering and math).
How to change Card Height
The card height is dynamic and fills the available window space. To change it:
Update WINDOW_HEIGHT in bothconstants.rs and constants.ts to the same value.
Restart the application (required for Rust changes).
How to change Vertical Spacing (Safe Zones)
To add more or less space at the top/bottom of the cards (e.g., to prevent clipping during hover):
Modify CARD_VERTICAL_PADDING in frontend/src/constants.ts.
Increasing this value makes cards shorter; decreasing it makes them taller.
Architecture & Design Decisions
Why Frontend Clipboard for Images? (Solving "Thread does not have a clipboard open")
We use a Hybrid Clipboard Approach to solve the notorious Windows OSError 1418 (Thread does not have a clipboard open).
Backend (Rust): Great for monitoring the clipboard and handling database checks. However, on Windows, clipboard access is bound to the thread that created the window (STA). Trying to write images from a background Tokio thread often leads to race conditions and "OpenClipboard Failed" errors. The solution would be to write images on the main thread, but this severely slows down UI responsiveness and causes lag.
Frontend (WebView2): The browser engine has a mature, stable implementation of navigator.clipboard.write.
Our Solution:
Frontend: Writes the Image Blob directly to the system clipboard.
Backend: Updates the internal database and triggers the paste shortcut (Shift+Insert).
Why use Shift+Insert for Pasting?
We use Shift + Insert as the default paste trigger instead of Ctrl + V.
Terminal Compatibility: Ctrl+V often fails in terminal emulators (PowerShell, WSL, VS Code Terminal), sending a control character instead of pasting.
Legacy Standard: Shift+Insert is the universal paste standard recognized by virtually all Windows applications, including terminals and legacy software.
Sequence Diagram for Image Pasting (Windows)
sequenceDiagram
actor User
participant FE as Frontend (React/App.tsx)
participant BE as Backend (Rust/commands.rs)
participant BROWSER as WebView2 Clipboard API
participant OS as OS / Target App
User->>FE: Double click image clip
activate FE
FE->>BE: invoke('get_clip_detail', { id })
BE-->>FE: Full image (base64)
FE->>FE: base64ToBlob(...)
FE->>BROWSER: navigator.clipboard.write([ClipboardItem])
BROWSER->>OS: Clipboard image data set
FE->>BE: invoke('paste_clip', { id })
deactivate FE
activate BE
BE->>BE: Update clip timestamp/LRU
Note over BE: On Windows, backend does not rewrite image bytes
BE->>OS: Hide window
BE->>OS: Send Shift+Insert (when auto-paste is enabled)
deactivate BE
OS->>User: Pasted image appears
