PasteFlow

A lightweight, native macOS clipboard manager that lives in your menu bar.
Never lose a copied item again.

---

✨ Features

Feature	Description
🖥️ Menu Bar App	Runs quietly in the menu bar — zero Dock clutter
📋 Clipboard History	Automatically saves up to 200 clipboard entries
🏷️ Smart Categories	Auto-detects content type: Text, URL, Code, Email, Number, Path
🔍 Quick Search	Filter history instantly with real-time search
📌 Pin Important Items	Pin entries so they survive history clears
🖱️ One-Click Copy	Click any item to copy it back to clipboard
⌨️ Global Hotkey	⌘ + ⇧ + V to open from anywhere
💾 Persistent Storage	History survives app restarts via local storage
🎨 Native UI	Built with SwiftUI, follows Apple's Human Interface Guidelines
🌗 Light & Dark Mode	Adapts automatically to system appearance

🖼️ Screenshots

Menu Bar Icon	Clipboard Panel
Lives in your menu bar	Clean, categorized clipboard history

Replace with actual screenshots after building the app.

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later
• Xcode 15.0+ (for building from source)

Build from Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Bojun-Vvibe/PasteFlow.git
cd PasteFlow

# Open in Xcode
open ClipBoard.xcodeproj

# Build and Run: ⌘ + R

Download Release

Download the latest .app from Releases and drag it to /Applications.

📖 Usage

1. Launch — PasteFlow appears as an icon in your menu bar (no Dock icon)
2. Copy anything — It automatically captures clipboard text content
3. Click the menu bar icon or press ⌘ + ⇧ + V to open the panel
4. Click any item to copy it back to your clipboard
5. Filter by category using the tabs: All · Text · URL · Code · Email · Number · Path
6. Search to find specific items from history
7. Pin important items by hovering and clicking the 📌 button
8. Clear history via the 🗑️ icon (with option to preserve pinned items)

🏗️ Architecture

ClipBoard/
├── ClipBoard.xcodeproj           # Xcode project configuration
├── GenerateIcon.swift            # Programmatic app icon generator
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
└── ClipBoard/
    ├── ClipBoardApp.swift        # App entry point & NSStatusItem menu bar setup
    ├── ClipboardManager.swift    # Core clipboard monitoring, storage & category detection
    ├── ClipboardContentView.swift# SwiftUI popover UI with search, filter & item rows
    ├── Info.plist                # App configuration (LSUIElement for menu bar only)
    ├── ClipBoard.entitlements    # App sandbox entitlements
    └── Assets.xcassets/          # App icons & accent color
        ├── AppIcon.appiconset/   # All icon sizes (16–1024pt, generated)
        └── AccentColor.colorset/ # Custom accent color

Key Design Decisions

• NSStatusItem + NSPopover — Standard macOS pattern for menu bar apps. The popover provides a native feel and auto-dismisses on outside clicks.
• Timer-based polling (0.5s) — Monitors NSPasteboard.general.changeCount for clipboard changes. Lightweight and reliable.
• UserDefaults persistence — Simple JSON serialization for clipboard history. No external database dependency.
• LSUIElement = true — App runs as an accessory (menu bar only), no Dock icon or main window.
• Content category detection — Regex and heuristic-based classification into 6 categories for easy filtering.
• Pinned items — Pinned entries float to top and are protected from bulk clear operations.

🎨 Regenerate App Icons

The app icons are programmatically generated with a gradient design. To regenerate all sizes:

swift GenerateIcon.swift ClipBoard/Assets.xcassets/AppIcon.appiconset

This generates icons for all required macOS sizes (16×16 to 512×512 @2x).

🔐 Permissions

PasteFlow requires:

• Accessibility permission — For the global hotkey (⌘ + ⇧ + V) and simulating paste events
• The app only monitors text content from the system clipboard
• All data is stored locally on your machine — nothing is sent to any server

🛠️ Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Language	Swift 5
UI Framework	SwiftUI
Platform	macOS 13.0+
Menu Bar	NSStatusItem + NSPopover
Storage	UserDefaults (JSON)
Clipboard	NSPasteboard polling (0.5s)
Hotkey	NSEvent global monitor
Icons	Programmatically generated (NSImage + NSBezierPath)

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

---

Made with ❤️ using SwiftUI