GPaste is a clipboard management system for GNOME: a daemon that remembers what you copy, plus a GTK 4 interface, a GNOME Shell extension and a CLI to get it back.
New to the idea? This post explains what clipboard managers are for.
- Persistent history across sessions, with several named histories you can switch between, back up and delete independently.
- Everything you copy: plain text, rich text and HTML, images (de-duplicated by checksum, kept as files or as database blobs depending on the storage backend), URIs and colours.
- Encryption at rest — an optional libsodium-backed history, with the passphrase optionally kept in the keyring.
- Pluggable storage: an XML file, a per-history SQLite database that
persists incrementally, or nothing at all. Switch at any time from the
preferences or with
gpaste-client migrate. - Passwords: mark an item as a password to have it shown as a name instead of its contents, and excluded from the plain-text history.
- Favourites: pin an item and the history never drops it on its own — the
size and memory limits give way instead. Filter the list down to the pinned
items from the UI, the extension or
gpaste-client --favourites. - Search, merge and edit items from the UI, the extension or the CLI.
- GNOME Shell integration through a native extension, with an optional experimental mode that runs the daemon inside the Shell itself.
- Global shortcuts through the XDG portal, so they work the same on Wayland and X11.
sudo dnf install gpaste gpaste-ui gnome-shell-extension-gpasteThen enable the extension in the Extensions app.
# Build dependencies (Fedora)
sudo dnf install meson ninja-build gcc gettext-devel \
glib2-devel gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel gcr-devel \
dbus-devel gnome-control-center
# Optional, but on by default when found
sudo dnf install libsodium-devel sqlite-devel libsecret-devel \
libpwquality-devel gobject-introspection-devel vala
git clone https://github.com/Keruspe/GPaste.git
cd GPaste
meson setup build
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install
sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/GPaste currently needs GLib 2.90, GTK 4.24, libadwaita 1.10 and gcr 4.
Pass these to meson setup (or meson configure build) as -Doption=value.
The feature ones default to auto: enabled when the dependency is present,
skipped otherwise.
| Option | Default | What it controls |
|---|---|---|
encryption |
auto |
libsodium-based history encryption |
sqlite |
auto |
the SQLite storage backends (needs SQLite ≥ 3.35) |
libsecret |
auto |
remember the encryption passphrase in the keyring |
pwquality |
auto |
rate passphrase strength in the new-history prompt |
gnome-shell |
true |
the GNOME Shell extension and the mutter clipboard backend |
introspection |
true |
GIR data |
vapi |
true |
Vala bindings (requires introspection) |
systemd |
true |
the systemd user unit |
bash-completion, zsh-completion, fish-completion |
true |
shell completions |
For a minimal build:
meson setup build -Dgnome-shell=false -Dintrospection=false -Dvapi=false| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+Alt+H | Show the history |
| Ctrl+Alt+G | Launch the graphical tool |
| Ctrl+Alt+V | Pop the first item off the history |
| Ctrl+Alt+S | Mark the active item as a password |
| Ctrl+Alt+O | Sync the clipboard to the primary selection |
| Ctrl+Alt+P | Sync the primary selection to the clipboard |
| Ctrl+Alt+U | Upload the active item to a pastebin (needs wgetpaste) |
All of them are configurable in the preferences.
gpaste-client # print the history
gpaste-client --oneline --use-index # ... one line per item, numbered
gpaste-client search <pattern> # print matching items
gpaste-client select <uuid> # put an item back in the clipboard
gpaste-client add <text> # copy some text
echo hello | gpaste-client # copy from a pipe
gpaste-client file <path> # copy a file's contents
gpaste-client delete <uuid> # forget one item
gpaste-client empty # forget everything
gpaste-client ui # open the graphical tool
gpaste-client preferences # open the settings
gpaste-client migrate # switch storage backend
gpaste-client change-passphrase # re-key an encrypted historygpaste-client help lists every subcommand; see also man gpaste-client.
Items are addressed by UUID by default. Pass --use-index to use their
position in the history instead.
Restart the daemon so the new version takes over:
gpaste-client daemon-reexec
gpaste-client daemon-version # confirm which one is runningThree libraries are installed, each with its own pkg-config file, headers, GIR and VAPI:
| Library | pkg-config | GIR | Contents |
|---|---|---|---|
libgpaste-3 |
gpaste-3 |
GPaste-3 |
Core objects, settings, and the D-Bus client for the daemon |
libgpaste-daemon |
gpaste-daemon |
GPasteDaemon-1 |
The clipboard item hierarchy, the history and the storage backends |
libgpaste-gtk4 |
gpaste-gtk4 |
GPasteGtk-4 |
GTK 4 / libadwaita widgets and helpers |
Each has a single umbrella header — <gpaste.h>, <gpaste-daemon.h> and
<gpaste-gtk4.h> — which is the only one you may include directly.
Run the test suite from the build directory:
ninja -C build testAGENTS.md documents the architecture, coding style and
repository conventions in more detail.
Translations go through Weblate.
Bug reports and patches are welcome on GitHub.
The latest release for GNOME 50 is GPaste 50.7 (tarball).
Release announcements and everything else about GPaste are
on my blog. See
NEWS for the full changelog.
