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Claw: The Cross-Platform Clipboard Manager Built for Linux Power Users

Quick Summary: 📝

Claw is a highly customizable, cross-platform clipboard manager designed for Linux desktop environments running X11 or Wayland. Built using Rust and Tauri, it provides essential features like persistent clipboard history, system tray integration, and a keyboard-driven interface optimized for window managers. It is also extensively themeable, offering several popular built-in themes like Dracula and Nord.

Key Takeaways: 💡

  • ✅ Claw is a lightweight, high-performance clipboard manager built with Tauri and Svelte, ensuring minimal resource usage.

  • ✅ It offers true cross-platform compatibility, supporting both X11 (via xclip) and Wayland (via wl_clipboard) environments seamlessly.

  • ✅ The application is highly customizable, featuring fully configurable keybinds and several built-in themes (e.g., Dracula, Nord).

  • ✅ It is Window Manager friendly, relying on a fast, keyboard-driven interface for navigating and selecting clipboard history.

  • ✅ Claw drastically improves developer workflow by providing instant access to clipboard history, reducing context switching and redundant copying.

Project Statistics: 📊

  • Stars: 8
  • 🍴 Forks: 1
  • Open Issues: 0

Tech Stack: 💻

  • ✅ Rust

Have you ever been deep in a coding session, frantically copying and pasting snippets, only to realize you accidentally overwrote that crucial piece of code you needed five minutes ago? It’s a universal developer frustration. The standard clipboard is a one-slot machine—once you copy something new, the old data is gone forever. If you’re a Linux user, especially one running a minimal Window Manager like i3 or Sway, finding a slick, reliable clipboard history tool that plays nice with both X11 and Wayland can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Enter Claw, the "Crustacean powered clipboard" that’s here to rescue your workflow. This project isn't just another utility; it’s a beautifully crafted, highly performant clipboard manager built using the modern tech stack of Tauri and Svelte. This combination means you get a snappy, responsive user interface wrapped in a lightweight native binary, avoiding the heavy resource usage often associated with Electron apps. Claw’s core purpose is simple: it remembers everything you copy, giving you instant access to a configurable history of your last 100 (or more!) copied items.

What makes Claw stand out, particularly for the Linux power user, is its deep commitment to compatibility and speed. It seamlessly bridges the gap between older X11 environments (using xclip) and modern Wayland setups (using wl_clipboard), ensuring a consistent experience no matter your desktop environment. This cross-platform design is crucial for developers who switch between different machines or window managers frequently.

The interface is designed for speed, not distraction. If you live and breathe keyboard shortcuts, you’ll love Claw. It's truly Window Manager friendly, offering a completely keyboard-driven interface. Navigating your history is as simple as pressing j and k—classic Vim keybindings—and hitting Return to instantly paste the selected item back into your active application. You can even customize these keybinds entirely via a simple configuration file if j/k isn't your style.

But functionality doesn't mean sacrificing aesthetics. Claw is highly themeable, allowing you to match it perfectly to your existing terminal or editor setup. Whether you prefer the dark, moody vibes of Dracula, the vibrant contrast of Catppuccin, or the retro warmth of Gruvbox, Claw has built-in themes ready to go. This level of customization ensures the tool feels integrated into your workflow, not just bolted on.

For developers, the benefits are clear: reduced context switching, improved productivity by eliminating redundant copying, and a clean, reliable system tray presence for quick access to your history or management functions. Installation is a breeze, too, with packages available for Arch (via AUR), Debian, and Fedora. If you're tired of losing your clipboard contents and want a fast, customizable, and platform-agnostic solution for your Linux desktop, Claw is absolutely worth diving into. It’s the productivity boost your copy-paste game has been waiting for.

Learn More: 🔗

View the Project on GitHub


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