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LinPaste Roadmap

This document tracks where LinPaste is, where it's going, and why. It's informed by what mature clipboard managers (GPaste, CopyQ, Windows 11's Win+V, Maccy, Ditto) already do well, filtered through LinPaste's goal: the cleanest possible "Win+V for Linux" on Wayland/GNOME, with an honest path to other desktops.

Last reviewed: 2026-06-09 · Current release: v0.2.0

Design principles

These constrain every item below:

  1. Local-first & private. History never leaves the machine unless the user explicitly turns on sync. Password-manager content is skipped by default.
  2. Keyboard-first. Every common action must be reachable without the mouse.
  3. Boring storage. Plain SQLite + files on disk, XDG paths, easy to inspect, back up, or delete. No proprietary blobs.
  4. Light capture path. The hot path (linpaste store, run once per copy) must stay fast and never import GTK.
  5. Graceful degradation. Missing a hotkey, extension, or DE feature should warn clearly, never crash; the core copy/paste must still work.

Where we are (shipped in v0.2.0)

  • ✅ Background capture via a GNOME Shell extension (polls the clipboard ~1s).
  • ✅ Text and image history in SQLite (~/.local/share/linpaste/).
  • ✅ De-duplication (re-copy bumps the existing row) and history cap / trim.
  • ✅ GTK4 / libadwaita popup with live search and keyboard navigation.
  • ✅ Pin / unpin entries (pinned never trimmed).
  • ✅ Auto-paste — synthesize Ctrl+V into the previously focused window.
  • ✅ Delete entry and Clear all.
  • ✅ Password-manager privacy skip (x-kde-passwordManagerHint).
  • ✅ CLI: store, show, list, clear, status, enable, setup.
  • ✅ .deb packaging + from-source installer.

Milestones

v0.3 — Polish the daily-driver experience

Goal: make the existing core feel finished. No new subsystems.

  • Persistent config file (~/.config/linpaste/config.toml) replacing the env-var-only settings; env vars still override. Single source of truth for max_history, show_limit, auto_paste, etc.
  • Preferences window (libadwaita) — history size, auto-paste toggle, sensitive-skip toggle, launch-on-login. No more editing env vars.
  • Per-item context menu / edit — edit text before pasting, copy without pasting, pin, delete, "copy as plain text".
  • Better search — case-insensitive (done via LIKE today) plus optional fuzzy matching and match highlighting in the list.
  • Time-stamps in the UI — "5 min ago" relative labels per entry.
  • Keyboard refinements — number keys (1–9) to paste the Nth item, Ctrl+Enter to copy-without-paste.

v0.4 — Smarter content

Goal: treat clipboard items as typed data, not just a string blob.

  • Content-type detection & badges — URL, color (#rrggbb), email, file path, code-ish blocks. Show an icon/badge per row.
  • Type filters — filter the popup to text / image / link / file (chips along the top, à la Maccy/CopyQ).
  • Rich-text / HTML awareness — already store html; offer "paste as rich text" vs "paste as plain text".
  • Per-source tracking — record the foreground app/window title at copy time (via the capture extension) and make it searchable / filterable.
  • Quick actions on detected types — open URL, preview color swatch.

v0.5 — Snippets & templates

Goal: the most-requested power feature across CopyQ / Ditto / Windows 11.

  • Saved snippets — promote any entry to a named, permanent snippet distinct from rolling history.
  • Placeholder expansion — {{date}}, {{time}}, {{clipboard}}, {{cursor}} expanded on paste.
  • Snippet groups / quick-pick — categorize and search snippets separately from history.

v0.6 — Security & trust

Goal: make it safe to keep sensitive history, and easy to keep it clean.

  • Encryption at rest — optional encrypted DB / image store (e.g. SQLCipher or app-level AES-256), unlocked per session.
  • Exclude-list — never record from configured apps (password managers, terminals, banking sites) by window class / title.
  • Auto-expiry — drop unpinned entries older than N days.
  • Incognito / pause capture — toggle to stop recording temporarily (tray/menu and CLI), with a clear indicator.
  • "Wipe now" panic action — one keystroke to clear everything, including backing image files.

v0.7 — Reach beyond GNOME

Goal: stop being GNOME-only without compromising the GNOME experience.

  • wlroots / generic Wayland backend — use wl-paste --watch where the wlr-data-control protocol exists (Sway, Hyprland, KDE Plasma 6), so no shell extension is needed there.
  • KDE Plasma support — capture + global shortcut wiring for Plasma.
  • X11 fallback — optional support for legacy X11 sessions.
  • Pluggable capture backends — pick the right one automatically per session; document the matrix.

v0.8 — Sync (opt-in)

Goal: Windows-11-style "it follows me to my other machine" — privately.

  • Local network sync — peer-to-peer over LAN, end-to-end encrypted, no third-party server.
  • File-based sync — point history at a synced folder (Syncthing / Nextcloud / Dropbox) à la CopyQ tabs.
  • Conflict handling & device identity — sane merge of histories.

Backlog / exploratory

Not committed — captured so they're not lost.

  • File/arbitrary-MIME entries — copy actual files, not just text/images.
  • OCR on images — make screenshots text-searchable.
  • Multiple clipboards / tabs (CopyQ-style organization).
  • Scripting hooks — run a user command on each new clip.
  • Emoji / symbol picker integrated into the popup.
  • Themes & layout options for the popup.
  • GNOME Shell tray indicator with recent items menu.
  • Flatpak distribution alongside the .deb.

Engineering / project health

Cross-cutting work that should land alongside features, not after.

  • Test suite — unit tests for db/config/clipboard (pure logic), plus a headless harness for the store→list→trim path.
  • CI — lint + tests on push (GitHub Actions); build the .deb on tag.
  • DB migrations framework — the ad-hoc _ensure_kind_column shim won't scale; introduce a small versioned-migration helper before v0.4's schema changes (source app, content type, snippets).
  • Structured logging & linpaste doctor — one command that diagnoses capture/hotkey/extension state and prints actionable fixes.
  • Packaging for more distros — PPA and/or Flatpak; AUR for Arch users.
  • Documentation — architecture doc, contribution guide, screenshots/GIF.

How this maps to competitors

Capability GPaste CopyQ Win+V LinPaste today LinPaste target
Text history ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Image history ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Pinning ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Search ✅ ✅ ⚠️ ✅ ✅ (fuzzy)
Auto-paste ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Password skip ✅ ⚠️ — ✅ ✅ (+exclude)
Snippets / templates ⚠️ ✅ ⚠️ — ✅ (v0.5)
Encryption at rest ⚠️ ✅ — — ✅ (v0.6)
Content-type filters ⚠️ ✅ ⚠️ — ✅ (v0.4)
Cross-device sync — ✅* ✅ — ✅ (v0.8)
File entries ✅ ✅ — — backlog
Non-GNOME desktops — ✅ — — ✅ (v0.7)

⚠️ = partial / via add-on. * CopyQ sync is via synced folders.

This roadmap is a living document — milestones may be reordered as feedback arrives. Dates are intentionally omitted; order signals priority.