Cursor Clip - GTK4 Clipboard Manager with Dynamic Positioning

A modern Wayland clipboard manager built with Rust, GTK4, Libadwaita, and Wayland Layer Shell that makes clipboard handling more reliable. Features a Windows 11–style clipboard history interface with native GNOME design, which is always positioned at the current mouse pointer location.

Features

📋 Windows 11-Style Clipboard History

• Clean list interface: Similar to Windows 11 clipboard history
• Content type indicators: Icons for text, URLs, code, files, etc.
• Rich previews: Formatted content display for text, images, and file paths
• Timestamps: When each item was copied
• Quick selection: Click any item to copy it back to the clipboard
• Search and filter: Live search through clipboard history
• Pin or delete items: Manage your history with ease
• Instant paste: Option to immediately paste the selected item into the active application
• Persistent history: Option to store clipboard history across sessions with automatic encryption

🖱️ Advanced Wayland Integration

• Layer Shell Protocol: Proper overlay positioning above all windows
• Precise Cursor Tracking: Real-time mouse position detection
• Multi-output Support: Works across multiple monitors
• Multi-input Support: Fully controllable with mouse and keyboard

🎨 Native GNOME Design

• Libadwaita styling: Follows GNOME Human Interface Guidelines
• Native widgets: HeaderBar, ListBox, ScrolledWindow
• Dynamic theming: Adapts to light/dark mode and system accent colors

📂 Automatic Clipboard Monitoring (Wayland)

• Stores copied items in memory or in a persistent database and removes duplicates.
• Automatic classification of content types:
• 📝 Text
• 🔗 URLs
• 💻 Code
• 🔒 Passwords
• 📁 File paths
• 🖼️ Images

🎥 Video Showcase

Your browser does not support the video tag. You can watch it here: Video link.

Compositor Support

• The backend uses zwlr_data_control_manager_v1 to automatically monitor and set clipboard content.
• The frontend uses zwlr_layer_shell_v1 to retrieve pointer coordinates and show the overlay.

• Supported compositors (must support both protocols):

  • KDE Plasma (Wayland session)
  • Hyprland
  • Sway
  • niri
  • Labwc
  • Other wlroots-based compositors

• Although the application uses GNOME styling and follows the GNOME HIG, GNOME Shell is unfortunately NOT SUPPORTED. It does not implement the required Wayland protocols (zwlr_layer_shell_v1 and zwlr_data_control_manager_v1) needed for Cursor Clip's key features. Future support is not impossible but will require major code and workflow changes and a separate GNOME Extension.

System Requirements

• Wayland compositor, GTK4, gtk4-layer-shell, libadwaita, Rust

Installation on Arch Linux based distributions via AUR

You can install Cursor Clip from the AUR using an AUR helper like yay:

yay -S cursor-clip-git

Manual Building

Install Dependencies

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S gtk4 libadwaita gtk4-layer-shell

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev libgtk4-layer-shell-dev

Fedora:

sudo dnf install gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel gtk4-layer-shell

Download and Compile

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Sirulex/cursor-clip
cd cursor-clip

# Build in release mode
cargo build --release

Building with Docker

Build a containerized version that includes all dependencies:

# Build the Docker image and install the binary
docker build -t cursor-clip .
docker create --name cursor-clip-temp cursor-clip
sudo docker cp cursor-clip-temp:/output/cursor-clip /usr/local/bin/
sudo docker cp cursor-clip-temp:/output/libgtk4-layer-shell.so* /usr/local/lib/
docker rm cursor-clip-temp

# Update library cache and run
sudo ldconfig
cursor-clip --daemon

Building with Nix Flake

# Build and install using Nix Flakes (default package)
nix build .
# or: nix build .#default
sudo cp result/bin/cursor-clip /usr/local/bin/

# Optional: enter the development shell
nix develop

Usage

1. Start Background Daemon: cursor-clip --daemon
2. Launch Overlay: Run cursor-clip without any arguments (ideally bind it to a hotkey, e.g., Super+V)
3. Trigger: Your mouse position is automatically captured
4. View History: The clipboard history window will appear at your cursor position, showing:
5. Recent clipboard items with content previews
6. Content type icons (text, URL, code, password, file)
7. Timestamps showing when items were copied
8. Quick actions: Clear All, Delete, Pin and Close
9. Interact:
10. Click any item to copy it back to the clipboard
11. Scroll through your clipboard history
12. Clear All to remove all history items
13. Delete to remove a single item from history
14. Pin to keep an item permanently at the top of the list
15. Search: Press the search icon or / on your keyboard to focus the search field and filter clipboard items live by preview text or content type
16. Search actions: Press Enter to paste the currently selected filtered result; press Esc to leave the search field and continue navigating the filtered list; press Up/Down to move into the filtered results; press Ctrl+U to delete everything before the cursor in the search field
17. Keyboard navigation: Use Arrow keys or J/K to navigate, Enter to select, Delete to remove, P to pin, Esc to close the overlay when the search field is not focused
18. Three-dot menu on the window header allows you to toggle Delete/Pin button visibility, instant paste and persistent history (config stored permanently in ~/.config/cursor-clip/config.toml)

Persistent History Security

If persistent history is enabled, clipboard history is stored in an encrypted local database. The database key is stored in your operating system keyring and reused on restart. This ensures that your clipboard history remains secure and private, even if someone gains access to your filesystem (e.g., sidechannel attacks). The encryption and key management are handled automatically by Cursor Clip, so you can enable persistent history with just a simple toggle.

Instant paste note:

On KDE Plasma, instant paste is currently not available because the compositor does not provide virtual-keyboard-unstable-v1 protocol support. See compositor support details at the bottom of: https://wayland.app/protocols/virtual-keyboard-unstable-v1

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                 Cursor Clip                     │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  GTK4 + Libadwaita UI Layer                     │
│  ├── Modern styling with CSS                    │
│  ├── Responsive layouts                         │
│  └── Accessibility features                     │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Wayland Layer Shell Integration                │
│  ├── zwlr_layer_shell_v1 protocol               │
│  ├── Positioning and anchoring                  │
│  └── Overlay layer management                   │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Clipboard Management                           │
│  ├── Data Control Manager for privileged access │
│  ├── IPC communication via UNIX domain sockets  │
│  ├── IndexMap for clipboard history storage     │
│  └── Stoolap for persistent history storage     │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Dependencies

Core Libraries

• GTK4: Modern UI toolkit
• Libadwaita: GNOME's design system
• gtk4-layer-shell: Wayland layer shell integration
• wayland-client: Wayland protocol bindings
• wayland-protocols: Extended Wayland protocols
• wayland-protocols-wlr: wlroots-specific Wayland protocols
• Tokio runtime: Asynchronous runtime
• serde: Serialization framework
• indexmap: Ordered map for clipboard history
• fast_image_resize: Efficient image resizing for previews
• keyring: Secure storage for encryption keys
• stoolap: Encrypted local database for persistent history
• env_logger: Logging framework

---

Built with ❤️ using Rust, GTK4, Libadwaita, and Wayland Layer Shell

Support

If you find this project useful and would like to support its development, consider sponsoring me on GitHub or Ko-fi. Your support helps me dedicate more time to improving and maintaining Cursor Clip. - GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/Sirulex - Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/sirulex

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0). See LICENSE for the full text.