UniClipboard

Project Overview

Copy on one device. Paste on another — even across the internet.

No cloud account. No third-party servers. Your clipboard never leaves your devices in a form anyone else can read.

UniClipboard is a privacy-first, cross-device clipboard synchronization tool. It enables seamless and secure syncing of text, images, and files across multiple devices, whether on the same Wi-Fi or across different networks. Data is encrypted both in transit and at rest, and decrypted only on the user’s devices—neither servers nor the network layer can ever access plaintext data.

[!WARNING] UniClipboard is currently under active development and may have unstable or missing features. Feel free to try it out and provide feedback!

Features

Cross-platform: First-class support on Windows, macOS, and Linux — your clipboard works wherever you do.
Cross-network sync: Real-time sync on the same Wi-Fi, across different home/office networks, or across the internet, with automatic NAT traversal and encrypted relay fallback — not just LAN, and not bound to a single network.
Encrypted spaces: Devices join a shared "space" with one invitation code + passphrase — no cloud account, no email, just two devices agreeing to trust each other.
Local full-text search: Search your full history in milliseconds, even with tens of thousands of entries — and the index itself stays encrypted on disk.
Text, images, and files: Copy on one device, paste on another. Large files use streaming transfer so they don't have to fit in memory.
Quick Panel: Keyboard-shortcut overlay with inline preview for text, links, images, code, and files — designed to feel like part of the OS clipboard, not a separate app you context-switch into.
Command-line tool: A uniclip CLI mirrors the GUI flow and works headlessly — built for terminals, SSH sessions, scripts, and tmux workflows.
Secure encryption: XChaCha20-Poly1305 AEAD keeps data encrypted in transit and at rest — even the relay only sees ciphertext.
Multi-device management: Manage paired devices, presence, and per-device sync preferences. Revoke a lost device from any other paired one — sync stops including it immediately.

Installation

Download from Releases

Visit the GitHub Releases page to download the installation package for your operating system.

Linux

Each release ships .deb, .rpm, and .AppImage artifacts for both x86_64 and aarch64 (where supported).

Fedora / RHEL / openSUSE — via COPR (recommended, auto-updating)

sudo dnf copr enable mkdir700/uniclipboard-alpha   # alpha channel; or mkdir700/uniclipboard for stable
sudo dnf install uniclipboard

After enabling, sudo dnf upgrade will pick up new releases automatically.

Or download a single .rpm / .deb / AppImage from the Releases page:

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo dpkg -i uniclipboard_<version>_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install -f                                 # resolve missing deps if any
Fedora / RHEL / openSUSE (one-shot, no COPR)
sudo dnf install ./UniClipboard-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm
AppImage (any distro)
chmod +x UniClipboard_<version>amd64.AppImage
./UniClipboard<version>_amd64.AppImage

Packaged installs (COPR / one-shot rpm / deb) do not auto-update from inside the app — use dnf upgrade / apt upgrade against your package source. The AppImage is what the in-app updater uses on Linux.

Homebrew (macOS)

On macOS, install via the official tap UniClipboard/homebrew-tap:

brew tap UniClipboard/tap Desktop app (.app bundle) brew install --cask uniclipboard CLI only — installs the uniclip command

brew install uniclipboard

Or install in a single command without tapping first:

brew install --cask UniClipboard/tap/uniclipboard   # GUI
brew install UniClipboard/tap/uniclipboard          # CLI

The cask and the formula can coexist — install both if you want the GUI plus the uniclip command.

Build from Source

# Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/UniClipboard/UniClipboard.git cd UniClipboard Install dependencies bun install Start development mode bun tauri dev Build application

bun tauri build

Usage

First Device (Create a Space)

Launch the app and choose Create a Space
Set an encryption passphrase — this protects all data inside the space
Done. Copied content is stored encrypted in this space.

Adding More Devices (Join via Invitation)

On an existing device, open the Devices page and generate an invitation code (short-lived, valid for several minutes)
On the new device, choose Join an existing space, enter the invitation code together with the space passphrase
Once verified, the device joins and syncing starts automatically.

Already set up and want to move to another space? Use Switch space from the Devices page (or uniclip switch-space from the CLI) — your local clipboard history is re-encrypted and migrated.

Main Pages

Dashboard — Clipboard history with full-text search and detailed preview
Quick Panel — Keyboard-shortcut overlay for fast clipboard access
Devices — Manage paired devices and presence, generate invitation codes, switch spaces
Settings — General, sync, security, network, storage, and search-index options

Advanced Features

How it Works

flowchart LR
  subgraph A["Device A (your laptop)"]
    direction TB
    CC["Ctrl+C"] --> EA["encrypt<br/>(your key)"]
  end
  subgraph B["Device B (your desktop)"]
    direction TB
    DB["decrypt<br/>(your key)"] --> CV["Ctrl+V"]
  end
  EA -->|"P2P hole-punch"| DB
  EA -.->|"falls back"| R["Relay<br/>(sees only<br/>encrypted bytes)"]
  R -.-> DB

Pairing: Devices exchange a public key once, locally — no cloud account, no email.
Transport: Direct connection when devices can reach each other (same Wi-Fi or via NAT hole-punching across home/office networks); falls back to an encrypted relay otherwise.
Encryption: Payload encryption is independent of the transport — even a malicious relay only sees ciphertext.
Storage: Local history is encrypted at rest, and the search index is encrypted too.
Resilience: Connections recover automatically after Wi-Fi switches, sleep/wake, or brief disconnects — no re-pairing required.

Command-line Tool

The uniclip CLI mirrors the GUI flow and works headlessly (e.g. on servers):

uniclip init                    # Create a new encrypted space on this device
uniclip invite                  # Generate a short-lived invitation code
uniclip join <code>             # Join an existing space
uniclip members                 # List paired devices and presence
uniclip send "hello"            # Send clipboard content to other devices
uniclip watch                   # Stream incoming clipboard events
uniclip switch-space            # Move this device to another space
uniclip status / start / stop   # Daemon lifecycle

Privacy & Security

What we collect — Anonymous telemetry to help improve the app — never your clipboard content or any of your personal data. You can turn it off anytime in Settings, and we fully respect that choice.

What a relay can see — Encrypted bytes and connection metadata (source / destination peer IDs). It can't decrypt your content, ever.

What's stored on disk — An encrypted SQLite database, plus a search index designed so full-text search works without exposing plaintext.

If you lose a device — Revoke it from any other paired device. Future syncs will exclude it immediately.

You can audit it — Every line, including the cryptography, lives on GitHub. Trust the code, not the marketing.

Cryptography details

End-to-end encryption: Data is encrypted in transit between devices and remains encrypted at rest in local storage.
XChaCha20-Poly1305 AEAD — modern authenticated encryption.
- 24-byte random nonce effectively eliminates nonce-reuse risk
- 32-byte (256-bit) encryption key
- Provides ciphertext integrity and authenticity verification
Argon2id key derivation — securely derives encryption keys from your passphrase.
- Memory cost: 128 MB · Iterations: 3 · Parallelism: 4 threads
- Resistant to GPU / ASIC cracking attacks
Layered key architecture:
- MasterKey encrypts clipboard content
- Key Encryption Key (KEK) is derived from your passphrase via Argon2id
- KEK is stored in the system keyring (macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, Linux Secret Service)
- MasterKey is encrypted and stored in a KeySlot file
Per-space isolation: Each space has its own MasterKey; switching to another space re-encrypts local history under the new space's MasterKey.
Device authorization: Precise control over each paired device's access permissions.

FAQ

Why not just use iCloud Universal Clipboard? If you only use Apple devices, don't need history, and fully trust Apple's closed-source end-to-end encryption — iCloud is fine. The moment you add a Windows or Linux machine, want a searchable history, or want to verify the encryption yourself, you need something else.

Why not a self-hosted clipboard sync (e.g. ClipCascade)? Self-hosted means you have to run a server. UniClipboard works out of the box — direct P2P first, encrypted relay only as a fallback. You never have to operate any infrastructure.

Does it work fully offline / LAN-only? Yes. Devices on the same Wi-Fi connect directly without going through the relay. Even if the relay is unreachable, devices on the same network keep syncing.

Where does my clipboard history actually live? Only on your devices. Local storage is encrypted at rest with a key that never leaves the device's system keyring. No UniClipboard server ever receives or stores your clipboard content.

I upgraded from an older version — why are my devices not paired anymore? The 0.6 release replaced the underlying networking stack. Existing pairings from earlier versions are no longer valid; re-pairing once via the Devices page (or uniclip invite / uniclip join) restores sync.

Contributing

Contributions of all kinds are welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for the full development setup, branching strategy, commit conventions, and PR process.

Quick start:

Fork this repository
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
Commit your changes following the project's commit conventions
Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
Open a Pull Request against the dev branch

License

This project is licensed under the AGPL-3.0 License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

Tauri - Cross-platform application framework
React - Frontend UI development framework
Rust - Safe and efficient backend implementation language
iroh - QUIC-based P2P networking that powers cross-network direct connections and blob transfer
Tokio - Asynchronous runtime that drives every networking and I/O path
shadcn/ui - Composable component recipes built on Radix UI
Radix UI - Unstyled, accessible primitives behind the desktop interface
Tailwind CSS - Utility-first styling for the entire UI
SQLite - Embedded database that stores clipboard history locally

Have questions or suggestions? Create an Issue or contact us to discuss!

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