CopyBrain

Never lose a copied text again.

CopyBrain is a modern clipboard timeline application for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Unlike typical clipboard managers that only keep the last few items, CopyBrain automatically archives your entire clipboard history into a searchable timeline — find anything you copied yesterday, last week, last month, or even years ago.

CopyBrain is open source and MIT-licensed. Since it stores everything you've ever copied — including things like passwords or tokens that end up on your clipboard by accident — the source is public so anyone can audit exactly what it does with your data (spoiler: nothing leaves your machine) or build it themselves from source instead of trusting a downloaded binary. 100% private, secure, and transparent by design — see PRIVACY.md for the details.

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Download

Grab the latest installer for your platform from the Releases page:

macOS: CopyBrain_<version>_universal.dmg
Windows: CopyBrain_<version>_x64-setup.exe (installer), CopyBrain_<version>_x64_en-US.msi (installer), or CopyBrain_<version>_x64_portable.zip (no install required)
Linux: CopyBrain_<version>_amd64.deb, CopyBrain-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm, or CopyBrain_<version>_amd64.AppImage

Prefer to build it yourself? See Building production binaries / installers below.

Features

Unlimited clipboard history, stored locally in SQLite
Timeline view (grouped by day) with virtual scrolling
Instant search (full-text search via SQLite FTS5)
Favorites & Collections
Automatic content-type detection: Text, URL, Email, Phone, File Path, Secret (masked by default), Social (per-platform icons), Code
Tracks which app each item was copied from
Tray icon + global shortcut (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+V) to show/hide the window
Auto start on login (optional)
Single instance (no duplicate windows)
100% local-first — no data is ever sent to any server

Tech Stack

Desktop shell

Tauri v2 — Rust ⟷ native webview bridge per platform

Frontend

React 19 + TypeScript
Vite 7 — dev server & bundler
Tailwind CSS v4 — styling (CSS-first config, no tailwind.config.js)
shadcn/ui (Base UI primitives) — UI components
TanStack Query — data fetching & caching against Tauri commands
TanStack Virtual — virtualized list for the timeline
Zustand — UI state (active filter, search query, etc.)
date-fns, lucide-react

Backend (Rust, in `src-tauri/`)

rusqlite (bundled feature) — SQLite compiled directly into the binary, with FTS5 built in for full-text search
arboard — reads/writes the system clipboard, polled from a background thread
active-win-pos-rs — identifies which app was frontmost when an item was copied
tauri-plugin-global-shortcut — global show/hide window shortcut
tauri-plugin-autostart — OS-level auto start
tauri-plugin-single-instance — prevents duplicate app instances
chrono, regex, uuid, once_cell, serde

Database

SQLite (local file, stored in the OS's app data directory)
FTS5 virtual table + triggers to keep the search index in sync
SQLCipher (optional, not yet enabled — see Roadmap)

Prerequisites (all platforms)

Required on every OS before development or building:

Tool	Minimum version	Check with
Node.js	18+ (20/22 LTS recommended)	`node -v`
pnpm	9+	`pnpm -v`
Rust	latest stable	`rustc -V` & `cargo -V`
Tauri CLI	installed automatically via `pnpm install` (devDependency)	`pnpm tauri -V`

Install Rust (if you don't have it) via rustup:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Additional per-platform dependencies

macOS

Xcode Command Line Tools:
```
xcode-select --install
```

Windows

Microsoft C++ Build Tools (workload "Desktop development with C++")
WebView2 Runtime — usually already bundled with Windows 10/11; download it if missing

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu, adjust for other distros)

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y \
  libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev \
  libappindicator3-dev \
  librsvg2-dev \
  patchelf \
  build-essential \
  curl \
  wget \
  file \
  libssl-dev \
  libxdo-dev \
  libayatana-appindicator3-dev \
  libxcb-ewmh-dev \
  libxcb-randr0-dev \
  libdbus-1-dev

Fedora/Arch use equivalent packages (webkit2gtk4.1-devel, etc). See the official Tauri prerequisites docs for the full per-distro list.

Running in development

# 1. enter the project folder
cd CopyBrain

# 2. install frontend dependencies
pnpm install

# 3. run the app (frontend hot reload + auto rebuild Rust on change)
pnpm tauri dev

This automatically:

Starts the Vite dev server at http://localhost:1420
Compiles the Rust backend (src-tauri)
Opens the native app window

Other useful dev commands:

pnpm dev                      # vite dev server only (no Tauri shell, for quick UI debugging)
cd src-tauri && cargo check   # check Rust code without a full build

Building production binaries / installers

Builds must be produced on their target platform — Tauri does not cross-compile native installers (e.g. a .exe must be built on Windows, a .dmg/.app on macOS, a .deb/.AppImage on Linux), unless you set up your own cross-compilation toolchain (advanced, not covered here — see the Tauri distribution guide if needed).

macOS

pnpm tauri build

Output in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/:

macos/CopyBrain.app
dmg/CopyBrain_<version>_<arch>.dmg

To build a universal binary (Intel + Apple Silicon):

rustup target add x86_64-apple-darwin aarch64-apple-darwin
pnpm tauri build --target universal-apple-darwin

Windows

Run on a Windows machine/VM:

pnpm tauri build

Output in src-tauri\target\release\bundle\:

msi\CopyBrain_<version>_x64_en-US.msi
nsis\CopyBrain_<version>_x64-setup.exe

Linux

pnpm tauri build

Output in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/:

deb/copybrain_<version>_amd64.deb
rpm/copybrain-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm (if rpmbuild is available)
appimage/copybrain_<version>_amd64.AppImage

Raw binary without an installer (all platforms)

pnpm tauri build --no-bundle

The standalone binary is at src-tauri/target/release/copybrain (.exe on Windows).

Building specific targets

With bundle.targets set to "all" in tauri.conf.json (this project's default), every installer format available on the current OS gets built. To restrict it:

pnpm tauri build --bundles dmg           # example: macOS, dmg only
pnpm tauri build --bundles msi,nsis      # example: Windows, msi + nsis
pnpm tauri build --bundles deb,appimage  # example: Linux

Project structure

CopyBrain/
├─ src/                     # React + TypeScript frontend
│  ├─ components/           # UI components (timeline, sidebar, dialogs, ui/ = shadcn primitives)
│  ├─ hooks/                # TanStack Query hooks (data fetching against Tauri commands)
│  ├─ store/                # Zustand UI state
│  ├─ lib/                  # helpers (date formatting, Tauri invoke wrapper, etc)
│  └─ types.ts              # data types matching the Rust structs
├─ src-tauri/                # Rust backend
│  ├─ src/
│  │  ├─ db/                # SQLite init + schema + FTS5
│  │  ├─ commands.rs        # all Tauri commands called from the frontend
│  │  ├─ clipboard_watcher.rs  # background thread polling the clipboard
│  │  ├─ content_type.rs    # content-type detection (url/email/phone/path)
│  │  ├─ models.rs
│  │  └─ lib.rs             # app setup: plugins, tray, shortcut, invoke_handler
│  └─ tauri.conf.json       # window, bundle, identifier config, etc
└─ package.json

Data location

The SQLite database (copybrain.db) is stored in the OS's default app data directory:

OS	Location
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/com.mac.copybrain/`
Windows	`%APPDATA%\com.mac.copybrain\`
Linux	`~/.local/share/com.mac.copybrain/`

Roadmap (not yet implemented)

Image clipboard support
OCR
AI semantic search
Cloud sync
Browser extension
Mobile companion app
Database encryption via SQLCipher (optional, currently disabled)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — bug fixes, features, docs, or just filing an issue.

Fork the repo and create a branch off main
Follow the existing project structure and conventions (see above)
Make sure pnpm build (frontend + TypeScript) and cargo check (in src-tauri/) both pass
Open a pull request describing what changed and why

For larger changes (new features, architecture changes), open an issue first to discuss the approach before investing time in a PR.

Privacy & Security

CopyBrain is 100% private and secure — no data collection, no network requests, fully open source. See PRIVACY.md for the full breakdown of what it does and doesn't do with your data.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
.github		.github
.vscode		.vscode
public		public
scripts		scripts
src-tauri		src-tauri
src		src
.gitignore		.gitignore
LICENSE		LICENSE
PRIVACY.md		PRIVACY.md
README.md		README.md
components.json		components.json
index.html		index.html
package.json		package.json
pnpm-lock.yaml		pnpm-lock.yaml
tsconfig.json		tsconfig.json
tsconfig.node.json		tsconfig.node.json
vite.config.ts		vite.config.ts

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Features

Tech Stack

Desktop shell

Frontend

Backend (Rust, in `src-tauri/`)

Database

Prerequisites (all platforms)

Additional per-platform dependencies

Running in development

Building production binaries / installers

macOS

Windows

Linux

Raw binary without an installer (all platforms)

Building specific targets

Project structure

Data location

Roadmap (not yet implemented)

Contributing

Privacy & Security

License

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Download

Features

Tech Stack

Desktop shell

Frontend

Backend (Rust, in src-tauri/)

Database

Prerequisites (all platforms)

Additional per-platform dependencies

Running in development

Building production binaries / installers

macOS

Windows

Linux

Raw binary without an installer (all platforms)

Building specific targets

Project structure

Data location

Roadmap (not yet implemented)

Contributing

Privacy & Security

License

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