Windows 11 Clipboard History For Linux: Super+V opens a Windows style panel

Super+V opens a Windows style clipboard panel on Linux

Windows 11 has a clipboard history panel that opens on Win+V and keeps everything you copied. Linux desktops have no equivalent by default, and the clipboard managers that do exist tend to be plain text lists with no search and no keyboard driven flow. This project builds that Windows 11 panel for a Linux desktop, styled to look the way users already know, and opens it on Super+V, with Ctrl+Alt+V as an alternative binding.

Inside the panel you get a searchable history, pinned snippets that stay at the top, and a built-in emoji keyboard that the README describes as searchable. The window follows the mouse cursor across multiple monitors, which matters more on a multi monitor Linux desk than it does on a single screen laptop.

The audience is a user who arrived from Windows and has not settled on a Linux clipboard workflow, and the developer who wants to extend the panel. It is a desktop application, not a library, and the data it keeps never leaves the machine: history is stored locally and no data is sent anywhere.

Rust and Tauri v2 carry the work, React and Tailwind paint it

The stack is Rust plus Tauri v2 plus React plus Tailwind CSS, and the repository root shows a normal Vite based frontend project with a src-tauri directory beside it. The frontend package is named win11-clipboard-history and it lists the Tauri API packages, the global shortcut plugin and the shell plugin, so the app talks to the windowing system through Tauri rather than through a browser extension.

Two dependencies explain most of the interface behaviour. react-window virtualises the history list, which keeps a long clipboard history scrollable, and fuse.js provides the fuzzy search that the panel is built around. emojilib backs the emoji picker, clsx handles conditional class names, and lucide-react provides the icons.

The frontend scripts in package.json are ordinary Vite and Tauri commands: dev runs the frontend dev server, build compiles TypeScript and then bundles, and tauri:dev and tauri:build drive the desktop shell. The Rust side is built through a Makefile that detects the distribution and can produce deb and rpm packages.

The /dev/uinput permission is the step that decides success

A clipboard manager on Linux needs permission to simulate the paste keystroke, and that is why every installation path ends with the same command:

sudo setfacl -m u:$USER:rw /dev/uinput

The README is explicit that no logout is required, because the installer grants access with ACLs rather than by changing group membership, so the permission takes effect on the running session. Every route to the app, the APT repository, the DNF repository, the AUR package and the AppImage, asks for that same one-time grant.

The Makefile carries the same idea for people who build from source. It detects the distribution from /etc/os-release with fallbacks for Debian, Fedora and Arch, and it separates the install prefix for a manual build, which defaults to /usr/local, from the package manager builds that use PREFIX=/usr. The distinction matters for anyone who installs without a package manager and then wonders why the binary is not on the path the desktop expects.

Five install paths, and a script that picks for you

The recommended route is a single command that detects the distribution, installs the app and configures the permissions:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gustavosett/Windows-11-Clipboard-History-For-Linux/master/scripts/install.sh | bash

For Debian, Ubuntu, Mint and Pop!_OS the manual route adds a Cloudsmith APT repository and then installs the package named win11-clipboard-history:

curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/gustavosett/clipboard-manager/setup.deb.sh' | sudo -E bash
sudo apt update && sudo apt install win11-clipboard-history
sudo setfacl -m u:$USER:rw /dev/uinput

Fedora, RHEL and CentOS use the same shape with the rpm setup script and dnf. Arch users install the AUR package win11-clipboard-history-bin with yay or paru, and those builds do not need the repository step.

The AppImage is the fallback for everything else, and the README warns against it: some features are disabled and the complete installation is strongly recommended. Making it executable and granting the device permission is the whole setup:

chmod +x win11-clipboard-history_*.AppImage

After that you register the file as a custom keyboard shortcut in your system settings, so the panel opens from a path of your choosing.

GNOME owns Super+V, so the Setup Wizard has to argue

The most common failure is not a bug in the app but a shortcut conflict. GNOME and other desktop environments often reserve Super+V for their own paste behaviour, and the panel never opens because the key never reaches the application. The Setup Wizard shipped with the app usually resolves this, and the fallback is to unbind Super+V in the system keyboard settings yourself.

If the app is running and the shortcut still does nothing, the documented reset removes the saved configuration and starts the binary again:

pgrep -f win11-clipboard-history-bin
rm ~/.config/win11-clipboard-history/setup.json
win11-clipboard-history

Graphics problems have their own switch. On NVIDIA, or when running from the AppImage, a black background or flickering is addressed by forcing the matching workaround through an environment variable:

IS_NVIDIA=1 win11-clipboard-history
IS_APPIMAGE=1 win11-clipboard-history

That the workaround is a pair of environment variables rather than a settings screen says something about how the app is meant to be configured: mostly by the wizard on first launch, then by files under ~/.config/win11-clipboard-history.

The GIF tab is switched off because Google ended the Tenor API

The feature list in the README still has a row for GIF integration, and the row is struck through. Searching Tenor and pasting a GIF straight into Discord or Slack is disabled, and the stated reason is that Google killed the Tenor GIF API, which also changed how X and Discord do GIF search.

The implementation is still in the source tree, so a maintainer could wire up a different provider later, and the README says exactly that. For a user the consequence is concrete: the tab is present in the interface history but does not work, and no amount of configuration brings it back without a code change.

This is the clearest example of how a third party API sits between a desktop application and a feature. The clipboard panel itself depends on nothing but the operating system, but the one feature that needed an outside service was removed when the service changed its terms.

Local storage, MIT licence, and a still moving project

Privacy here is simple to state: history is stored locally and no data leaves the machine. There is no account, no sync service and no telemetry described in the documentation. The licence is MIT, which lets you redistribute the code and ship your own build, and the repository carries an AUR directory and a scripts directory, so packaging changes are made in the open rather than in a private build system.

The project is not archived and the last push was on 2026-10-17, with tagged releases v0.7.1 on 2026-07-21, v0.6.6 on 2026-05-06 and v0.6.5 on 2026-04-18. The pattern shows patch releases every few months, with the version in package.json matching the newest tag at 0.7.1, so upgrading is a package manager operation on the APT and DNF routes and a rebuild on the AUR route.

For developers, the source build uses a Makefile with separate targets for dependencies, the Rust side and the Node side:

git clone https://github.com/gustavosett/Windows-11-Clipboard-History-For-Linux.git
cd Windows-11-Clipboard-History-For-Linux
make deps && make rust && make node
source ~/.cargo/env
make dev

The clone and the make targets come straight from the developer instructions, and the Cargo environment line is what puts the rustc toolchain on the path in a fresh shell.

Editorial conclusion

Take it if you want a Windows style clipboard panel on Wayland or X11 and do not mind a native Linux app that needs access to /dev/uinput. Leave it if you need a GIF provider, a fully featured AppImage, or a clipboard history that syncs between machines. Before installing, check that your desktop has not already bound Super+V and run the setfacl command for /dev/uinput, since the paste step needs that device permission.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. gustavosett/Windows-11-Clipboard-History-For-Linux on GitHub
2. License: MIT
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases