copyd

Wayland clipboard manager with a spotlight-style launcher.

One process. The clipboard watcher and the launcher window live in the same binary — no daemon to babysit. Launches hidden at login, pops up on a global hotkey, hides again after you pick something.

Linux only. Built and tested on Fedora 44 / GNOME 47 Wayland. macOS and Windows builds compile but autostart and packaging are not supported in this release.

Install

Pick the artifact that matches your distro from the latest release.

Fedora / RHEL / Rocky / Alma

sudo dnf install ./copyd-0.1.0-1.x86_64.rpm

Debian / Ubuntu (24.04+ / Debian 13+)

sudo apt install ./copyd_0.1.0_amd64.deb

Any distro (AppImage)

chmod +x copyd-*.AppImage
./copyd-*.AppImage

tar.gz (manual install)

tar -xzf copyd-0.1.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo install -m 0755 copyd /usr/local/bin/copyd

Verify any install:

copyd --version

Runtime dependencies

GTK4 + WebKitGTK 6.0 for the window and the clipboard. The RPM/DEB pull these in automatically. For AppImage / tar.gz on Fedora: sudo dnf install gtk4 webkitgtk6.0. On Ubuntu 24.04+: sudo apt install libgtk-4-1 libwebkitgtk-6.0-4.

The clipboard backend talks to GTK4's GdkClipboard in-process via cgo — same connection the window uses. Capture is reactive (driven by the GTK changed signal, not polling), and no extra Wayland clients are ever created, so the compositor sees a single stable copyd entry and the dock stays quiet. On an X11 session the libxcb-backed golang.design/x/clipboard is the fallback.

Usage

copyd is single-instance. The clipboard watcher runs inside the same process as the UI.

Two ways the process gets started:

1. At login — /etc/xdg/autostart/copyd.desktop runs copyd --hidden. The window is created hidden; the clipboard watcher starts immediately.
2. On demand — running copyd again (from a hotkey, terminal, or launcher) toggles the window in the already-running process.

Inside the window:

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Move selection
Enter	Copy selected item and hide
Space	Copy selected item (only when search is empty)
Type	Filter
Esc	Clear search; if already empty, hide
Click outside	Hide

After copy, the window auto-hides ~620 ms later (enough to see the confirmation animation).

Global hotkey

Wayland doesn't give clients global hotkeys — the compositor owns them. You bind a key to the copyd command in your desktop environment; Wails' single-instance plumbing toggles the window from inside the running process.

GNOME

Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts → +

Field	Value
Name	copyd
Command	copyd
Shortcut	Super+V

Or via CLI:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys custom-keybindings \
  "['/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/copyd/']"

dconf write /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/copyd/name "'copyd'"
dconf write /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/copyd/command "'copyd'"
dconf write /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/copyd/binding "'<Super>v'"

GNOME treats Super alone as "open Activities" on press-release. Super+V works but the overlay may flash if you hold Super. Swap to <Ctrl><Alt>v if that bothers you.

KDE Plasma

System Settings → Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts → Edit → New → Global Shortcut → Command/URL. Trigger: Meta+V. Action: copyd.

Sway / Hyprland / niri

# sway
bindsym $mod+v exec copyd

# hyprland
bind = SUPER, V, exec, copyd

Configuration

There is no settings file yet. Everything is on disk under the XDG data dir:

Path	Contents
${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/copyd/items.db	SQLite history
${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/copyd/images/	PNG payloads for image clips

Delete the directory to reset everything.

Disable autostart without uninstalling

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart
cat > ~/.config/autostart/copyd.desktop <<'EOF'
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=copyd (background)
Exec=copyd --hidden
Hidden=true
EOF

Build from source

You need:

• Go ≥ 1.25, with CGO_ENABLED=1
• Node ≥ 20
• Task — go install github.com/go-task/task/v3/cmd/task@latest
• Wails v3 CLI — go install -v github.com/wailsapp/wails/v3/cmd/wails3@latest
• GTK4 + WebKitGTK 6.0 headers (Fedora: gtk4-devel webkitgtk6.0-devel; Ubuntu 24.04+: libgtk-4-dev libwebkitgtk-6.0-dev)

git clone https://github.com/andrelopes-code/copyd.git
cd copyd
task build            # produces ./bin/copyd
task linux:package    # produces RPM + DEB + AppImage in ./bin

For the dev loop with auto-reload, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Architecture

See ARCHITECTURE.md.

License

MIT.