PasteRich

A lightweight, cross-platform background daemon for converting raw Markdown to Rich Text on the fly.

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⚡ Overview

PasteRich solves a massive friction point for developers: copying Markdown documentation, snippets, or AI outputs, and needing to paste them into enterprise applications (Microsoft Word, Outlook, Teams, Google Docs) without losing formatting.

Instead of running a heavy Electron application, PasteRich operates as an ultra-lightweight background system daemon. Copy any raw markdown text, hit your global hotkey, and PasteRich will instantly convert it to HTML/RTF, inject it into your OS clipboard, and seamlessly paste it directly into your active window.

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✨ Features

• 🖥️ Cross-Platform Native Clipboards: Supports Windows (CF_HTML), macOS (NSPasteboard via RTF), and Linux (xclip/xsel).
• 🪶 Zero-Overhead Daemon: Runs silently in the system tray. Absolutely no heavy frontend frameworks.
• ⌨️ Dynamic Hotkey GUI: Change your global shortcut instantly via a native UI popup. No app restarts required!
• 🚀 Auto-Start: Built-in support to register itself to run on system boot.
• 🎨 Smart CSS Styling: Uses GitHub's aesthetic for tables, blockquotes, and text.
• 🧑‍💻 Code Highlighting: Full syntax highlighting for code blocks via Pygments (Defaults to Monokai).
• 🧠 Smart Pass-Through: If the clipboard doesn't contain Markdown, the hotkey acts exactly like a normal paste!

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🚀 Installation & Usage

The easiest way to use PasteRich is to download the standalone compiled executable from the Releases page. No installation required!

1. Run the Executable

Launch PasteRich. A purple clipboard icon will appear in your system tray/menu bar.

2. Copy Markdown

Copy any text containing Markdown elements (e.g. **bold**, # headers, or ```python).

3. Hit the Hotkey!

Switch to your target application (Word, Outlook, etc.) and press the global hotkey:

• Windows & Linux: Ctrl + Win + V (Default)
• macOS: Cmd + Ctrl + V (Default)

The markdown will be rendered as beautiful rich text instantly!

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⚙️ Configuration

You can dynamically change your hotkey by right-clicking the tray icon and selecting Change Hotkey.

For advanced configuration, PasteRich creates a config.json in the same directory as the executable.

{
    "hotkey": "ctrl+shift+v",
    "theme": "monokai"
}

Custom Styling (style.css)

Want to customize how your pasted tables, fonts, or blockquotes look? Simply create a file named style.css in the same directory as PasteRich. If detected, PasteRich will automatically use your custom CSS instead of the default GitHub theme!

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🛠️ Building from Source

If you want to compile the executable yourself, PasteRich is built entirely in Python using PyInstaller.

1. Clone the repository and setup your environment:

git clone https://github.com/RamonRiosJr/PasteRich.git
cd PasteRich
python -m venv venv

2. Activate the virtual environment:

• Windows: .\venv\Scripts\activate
• macOS/Linux: source venv/bin/activate

3. Install requirements and compile:

pip install -r requirements.txt
python build.py

The compiled, standalone binary will be generated in the /dist directory.

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🤝 Contributing & Architecture

PasteRich is written in strictly-typed Python (pasterich.py). We welcome pull requests for new themes, extended markdown support, or OS-specific optimizations!

📜 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.