Clipless Documentation

Getting Started

  1. Download and install Clipless for your platform
  2. Launch the application – it starts monitoring your clipboard immediately
  3. Look for the Clipless icon in your system tray
  4. Copy content as you normally would; Clipless captures it automatically

Clipboard History

Clipless polls the system clipboard every 250ms and stores new content automatically. Supported formats:

  • Plain text with optional code language detection
  • HTML with rendered preview
  • RTF (rich text)
  • Images (screenshots, copied graphics)
  • Bookmarks (URLs with titles)

Duplicate content is detected and ignored. Click a clip’s row number (or use a Quick Clip hotkey) to copy it back to the clipboard.

Editing Clips

Click on any clip to expand it and edit its contents inline. When editing a text clip, Clipless applies best-guess syntax highlighting based on the text content, making it easier to work with code snippets and structured data.

Clip Actions

Each clip has a cog icon menu and a right-click context menu with actions including:

  • Lock/Unlock – prevent a clip from being removed when the history limit is reached
  • Delete – remove a clip from history
  • Scan for Search Terms – scan a previous clip’s content against your Quick Clips patterns and open the Tools Launcher with the results. This lets you use Quick Tools on any clip in your history, not just the most recent one.

Storage

Clipboard history is stored locally in an encrypted file (data.enc) using OS-native encryption:

  • Windows: DPAPI (Data Protection API)
  • macOS: Keychain Services
  • Linux: Secret Service API (GNOME Keyring / KDE Wallet)

No data is sent to any server.

Quick Clips

Quick Clips are user-defined regex patterns that extract data from clipboard content. When copied text matches a pattern, the extracted values can be used with Quick Tools and Templates.

How Patterns Work

Each pattern is a regular expression with named capture groups. The capture group names become tokens you can reference in Quick Tools URLs and Templates.

Example pattern for extracting a customer number:

Customer #\s*(?<customerNumber>\d+)

When you copy text containing “Customer # 123456”, Quick Clips extracts customerNumber = 123456.

Pattern Templates

Clipless includes pattern templates you can add with one click in the Tools Manager:

Pattern Capture Group
Email Address email
URL url
Domain Name domainName
Phone Number phoneNumber
IP Address (v4) ipAddress
MAC Address macAddress
IPv6 Address ipv6Address

These are suggestions, not active by default. Add the ones relevant to your work.

Managing Patterns

  1. Right-click the system tray icon and open Settings
  2. Go to the Tools tab
  3. Add patterns from templates or create custom ones with your own regex

Quick Tools

Quick Tools are URL templates that open web pages with data extracted by Quick Clips.

Setup

  1. Open Settings > Tools tab
  2. Add a new Quick Tool with a name and URL template
  3. Use capture group names as tokens in the URL

URL Templates

Tokens are capture group names wrapped in curly braces:

https://example.com/lookup?email={email}
https://tool.com/check?email={email}&domain={domainName}

A tool is available when its required tokens are present in the current Quick Clips matches.

Usage

When Quick Clips detects patterns in a clip, you can:

  • Click the scanner icon on the clip to see matches and open tools
  • Use the Tools Launcher window (Ctrl+Shift+T) for quick access
  • Use the cog icon or right-click menu on any clip and select “Scan for Search Terms” to scan older clips and open the Tools Launcher with their extracted data

Example: Call Center Workflow

Define patterns for email and customer number, then create tools:

CRM Lookup:    https://crm.company.com/search?email={email}
Account Info:  https://billing.company.com/customer/{customerNumber}
Ticket Search: https://helpdesk.company.com/history/{email}

Copy a customer email, and all three tools become available in one click.

Example: Data Entry

Define a pattern to extract an order number from pasted text, then create a tool:

Order Lookup: https://orders.company.com/view/{orderNumber}

Templates

Added in v1.6

Templates generate formatted text by substituting tokens with clipboard data.

Token Types

Positional tokens reference clips by recency:

  • {c1} – most recent clip
  • {c2} – second most recent
  • {c3} – third most recent, and so on

Named tokens reference Quick Clips capture group values:

  • {email}, {domainName}, {phoneNumber}, etc.

Example

Template:

Hello {c1},

Your account ({email}) has been updated. Reference number: {customerNumber}.

Regards

This pulls the most recent clip for the greeting name, and uses Quick Clips matches for the email and customer number.

Managing Templates

Templates are managed in Settings > Tools tab, alongside Quick Clips patterns and Quick Tools.

Added in v1.5

Press Ctrl+Shift+F (default hotkey) to toggle a search bar in the main window. Type to filter clips by content.

Tools Launcher Window

The Tools Launcher is a dedicated window for quickly acting on clipboard content.

  • Open with Ctrl+Shift+T (default hotkey)
  • Automatically scans the most recent clip against your Quick Clips patterns
  • Shows matched values and available Quick Tools
  • If already open, sending a new clip refreshes the content

Global Hotkeys

All hotkeys are configurable in Settings > Hotkeys. Any hotkey can be rebound or disabled.

Default Shortcut Action
Ctrl+Shift+V Toggle main window
Ctrl+Shift+1 Copy most recent clip to clipboard
Ctrl+Shift+2 Copy 2nd most recent clip
Ctrl+Shift+3 Copy 3rd most recent clip
Ctrl+Shift+4 Copy 4th most recent clip
Ctrl+Shift+5 Copy 5th most recent clip
Ctrl+Shift+F Toggle clip search bar
Ctrl+Shift+T Open Tools Launcher

On macOS, Ctrl is replaced with Cmd.

Settings Reference

Application

Setting Description Default
Maximum Clips Number of clips to retain (15-100) –
Start Minimized Start in system tray –
Auto Start Launch with OS –
Theme Light, Dark, or System System
Code Detection Detect and highlight code languages On

Window

Setting Description Default
Window Transparency Enable transparent window Off
Transparency Level Opacity percentage (0-100%) –
Opaque When Focused Full opacity when window is focused On
Always On Top Keep window above others Off
Remember Position Restore window position on launch On

Hotkeys

Configure key combinations for all 8 global hotkeys. Hotkeys can be individually enabled or disabled.

Tools

Manage Quick Clips patterns, Quick Tools, and Templates.

Code Detection

When enabled (Settings > Application > Code Detection), Clipless detects programming languages in text clips and applies syntax highlighting in the UI.

Security and Privacy

  • All clipboard data is encrypted at rest using OS-native encryption
  • Data is stored locally only – no cloud sync, no remote servers
  • No telemetry, analytics, or tracking of any kind
  • The application is open source: github.com/dantheuber/clipless

Workflow Examples

Call Center Agent

  1. Add Quick Clips patterns for email, phone number, and customer ID
  2. Create Quick Tools pointing to your CRM, billing system, and helpdesk
  3. When a customer provides their info, copy it once
  4. Open the Tools Launcher (Ctrl+Shift+T) to see extracted data and launch lookups

Data Entry

  1. Create Templates with positional tokens for standardized form text
  2. Use Quick Clips patterns to extract structured data from source documents
  3. Use the clipboard history (Ctrl+Shift+1 through 5) to quickly re-paste recent items

Troubleshooting

Clipboard not detecting content:

  • Verify Clipless is running (check system tray)
  • On macOS/Linux, check accessibility/permissions
  • Restart the application

Patterns not matching:

  • Verify regex syntax in your custom patterns
  • Test the regex against your expected input
  • Ensure capture groups are named: (?<name>...)

Quick Tools not opening:

  • Check URL template syntax (tokens use {name} format)
  • Verify the web tool URL is accessible
  • Ensure the required capture groups are present in matched data

General issues: