Clipfield

A native macOS clipboard manager built in Swift (SwiftUI + AppKit + SwiftData).

• Menu-bar app (no Dock icon) that keeps a searchable history of everything you copy.
• Global hotkey (⇧⌘V by default) opens a Spotlight-style picker over any app.
• Pick an item → it's pasted into the app you were just using.
• Rich types: text, styled/RTF text, images, files, links.
• Smart auto-tagging (links, emails, phones, addresses, dates, colors, code, numbers) with type-filter chips and tag-aware search.
• Pin frequently used items and organize them into folders.
• Tracks how many times each item has been pasted.
• Private by default: content marked private by password managers is ignored, you can exclude specific apps, and all history stays local.
• Optional encryption at rest: clip and snippet contents are sealed with AES-GCM using a 256-bit key kept in the macOS Keychain. Toggle it in Settings → Security.

Requirements

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.

Build & run

If you'd rather build it yourself, follow these instructions. Otherwise, download the .DMG from the Releases section.

./build_app.sh            # release build → Clipfield.app (ad-hoc signed)
open ./Clipfield.app

For a debug build: ./build_app.sh debug.

The script compiles the SwiftPM executable, assembles a proper .app bundle with Info.plist (LSUIElement), and ad-hoc code-signs it (which keeps the Accessibility permission grant stable across rebuilds).

Permissions

• Global hotkey: works with no permission (Carbon RegisterEventHotKey).
• Auto-paste: synthesizing ⌘V requires Accessibility permission. A welcome window on first launch walks you through granting it (and live-updates when you do); reopen it any time from the menu-bar right-click menu → Permissions & Welcome…. Until granted, selecting an item still copies it so you can press ⌘V yourself.

Distribution

./package_dmg.sh builds the release app and produces Clipfield.dmg (ad-hoc signed, for local use). Shipping to other Macs without Gatekeeper warnings requires signing + notarizing with an Apple Developer ID — the script prints the exact codesign / notarytool / stapler steps.

Encryption at rest

Turn on Settings → Security → “Encrypt clipboard data at rest.” When enabled, the sensitive payload of every clip and snippet (text, RTF/HTML, images, file references, raw pasteboard flavors, snippet bodies) is stored as an AES-GCM sealed blob; it's decrypted transparently on access. The 256-bit key lives in the macOS Keychain (data-protection keychain, available after first unlock, device-local — it never syncs or migrates to another Mac), so this is local encryption only, not a cross-device feature.

• Toggling the setting re-encrypts (or decrypts) your existing history in place.
• Metadata stays unencrypted so search, sorting, and de-duplication keep working: timestamps, source app, type/tags, and a non-reversible content hash used for dedup. (The hash is what enables matching duplicate captures without holding the plaintext.)
• Search remains fully live — it runs in memory over the decrypted values, not over the store.

Usage

• ⇧⌘V (or left-click the menu-bar icon): open the picker. Right-click the icon for Settings / Permissions / Quit.
• Type to search; query words that name a type (e.g. email, link, image) filter by tag.
• ↑ / ↓ move, ↩ paste, ⌥↩ paste as plain text, ⌘1–9 quick-paste, ⎋ dismiss.
• ⇥ add/remove from the paste stack, ⇧↩ paste the whole stack.
• ⌘E edit before pasting, ⌘P pin/unpin, ⌘⌫ delete (clears the search field first).
• ⌘[ / ⌘] move between sidebar sections (All · Pinned · Snippets · folders).
• Right-click a row for paste-as-plain, copy, open link, reveal in Finder, transforms, pin, move-to-folder, and delete.
• Snippets: reusable text with {{placeholder}} fields — selecting one prompts to fill the fields, then pastes. Create/edit in the Snippets section.
• The footer ⌨ button shows the full shortcut cheat-sheet.
• Resize the window (drag edges), the sidebar/preview (drag dividers), or collapse them.
• Change the hotkey, theme/size, retention, app exclusions, and launch-at-login in Settings.

Project layout

Sources/Clipfield/
  App/        @main app, AppDelegate (wiring), launch-at-login, permission state
  Models/     SwiftData models (ClipItem, Folder, Snippet) + ClipKind / SmartTag enums
  Storage/    ModelContainer + HistoryStore (dedup, retention, clear), CryptoVault, sample data
  Clipboard/  changeCount poller, pasteboard read/write, all-flavor capture, auto-paster
  Tagging/    on-device smart tagger (NSDataDetector + regex + NaturalLanguage), text transforms
  Search/     tag-aware search engine
  Hotkeys/    Carbon global hotkey + persisted binding
  Privacy/    per-app exclusions
  UI/         Theme, Settings, and the overlay (panel/controller/view/rows/preview/search field)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, a tour of the architecture and data flow, coding conventions, and common extension points (adding a smart tag, a text transform, or a setting).

In short:

DEVELOPER_DIR="/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer" swift build   # compile
./build_app.sh && open ./Clipfield.app                                   # build + run

Everything stays on-device — please keep it that way (no network, analytics, or telemetry).

License

Clipfield is released under the MIT License.