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07 / UTILITY
Floating Clipboard
Lightweight, HUD-style pinned clipboard manager for multi-display setups
< 15ms
Toggle Latency
18 MB
Memory
X11 & Wayland
Supported Protocols
Project Overview
Floating Clipboard is an ergonomic Linux utility designed for programmers and researchers who constantly juggle snippets of code, terminal commands, and research citations. Instead of an invisible history stack, it provides an unobtrusive, translucent HUD pinboard pinned to the edge of the workspace.
The Challenge & Problem
Standard clipboard managers force modal window toggles and break muscle memory when copying multiple items sequentially across different windows.
The Engineering Solution
A floating, always-on-top micro drawer that expands on mouse hover or shortcut, enabling drag-and-drop snippet insertion, JSON formatting, and regex extraction.
System Architecture
- X11 / Wayland clipboard listener using wl-clipboard and xclip bindings
- Lightweight Qt / QML window with transparent blur backing
- Fast in-memory cache with optional encrypted on-disk storage
- Regex matcher for automatic link, hex color, and terminal command detection
Key Capabilities & Features
- Multi-item sequential pasting buffer (paste 1st, 2nd, 3rd in order)
- Instant snippet cleaner (strips HTML formatting, whitespace, and smart quotes)
- Syntax highlighted code preview for Python, C++, and JSON
- Custom global hotkeys for lightning-fast toggling