GPaste

September 15, 2026 · View on GitHub

GPaste is a clipboard management system for GNOME: a daemon that remembers what you copy, plus a GTK 4 interface, a GNOME Shell extension and a CLI to get it back.

New to the idea? This post explains what clipboard managers are for.

Features

Persistent history across sessions, with several named histories you can switch between, back up and delete independently.
Everything you copy: plain text, rich text and HTML, images (de-duplicated by checksum, kept as files or as database blobs depending on the storage backend), URIs and colours.
Encryption at rest — an optional libsodium-backed history, with the passphrase optionally kept in the keyring.
Pluggable storage: an XML file, a per-history SQLite database that persists incrementally, or nothing at all. Switch at any time from the preferences or with gpaste-client migrate.
Passwords: mark an item as a password to have it shown as a name instead of its contents, and excluded from the plain-text history. Give it a timeout and the clipboard stops handing it out once that runs out.
Favourites: pin an item and the history never drops it on its own — the size and memory limits give way instead. Filter the list down to the pinned items from the UI, the extension or gpaste-client --favourites.
Search, merge and edit items from the UI, the extension or the CLI.
GNOME Shell integration through a native extension, whose menu names the history in use and switches to, creates, empties, backs up or deletes one, with an optional experimental mode that runs the daemon inside the Shell itself.
Global shortcuts through the XDG portal, so they work the same on Wayland and X11, and one switch in the preferences turns every one of them off.

Installation

Fedora

sudo dnf install gpaste gpaste-ui gnome-shell-extension-gpaste

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S gpaste

One package: it ships the daemon, the graphical tool and the extension together.

Debian and Ubuntu

sudo apt install gpaste-2 gnome-shell-extension-gpaste

The digit tracks the library API version, so it becomes gpaste-3 once this release lands. Ubuntu's copy lives in universe and lags a long way behind — several major versions, even on the current LTS — while Debian unstable keeps up.

openSUSE

sudo zypper install gpaste

Elsewhere

GPaste is packaged in plenty of other distributions — Alpine, nixpkgs, Void and Gentoo among them. Repology tracks which version each one ships.

Wherever it came from, enable the extension in the Extensions app once it is installed.

From source

On Fedora and other rpm-based distributions:

# Build dependencies
sudo dnf install meson ninja-build gcc gettext-devel \
                 glib2-devel gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel gcr-devel \
                 dbus-devel gnome-control-center

# Optional, but on by default when found
sudo dnf install libsodium-devel sqlite-devel libsecret-devel \
                 libpwquality-devel gobject-introspection-devel vala

On Debian, Ubuntu and other deb-based distributions:

# Build dependencies
sudo apt install meson ninja-build build-essential pkg-config gettext \
                 libglib2.0-dev libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev libgcr-4-dev \
                 libdbus-1-dev systemd-dev gnome-control-center

# Optional, but on by default when found
sudo apt install libsodium-dev libsqlite3-dev libsecret-1-dev \
                 libpwquality-dev gobject-introspection \
                 libgirepository1.0-dev valac

dbus, systemd and gnome-control-center are wanted for their pkg-config files alone, which say where the D-Bus service and interface files, the systemd user unit and the control-center keybinding files go. Fedora ships systemd's in the base package, which is why only the apt line names it. A packager who would rather not pull any of them in can name the four directories outright — -Ddbus-services-dir, -Ddbus-interfaces-dir, -Dsystemd-user-unit-dir and -Dcontrol-center-keybindings-dir — and dbus and gnome-control-center are still needed at runtime either way.

Then, wherever you are:

git clone https://github.com/Keruspe/GPaste.git
cd GPaste
meson setup build
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install
sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

GPaste currently needs GLib 2.90, GTK 4.24, libadwaita 1.10 and gcr 4. That libadwaita is newer than anything Debian ships outside experimental, so a deb-based build of the 51 series needs one built by hand.

Build options

Pass these to meson setup (or meson configure build) as -Doption=value. The feature ones default to auto: enabled when the dependency is present, skipped otherwise.

Option	Default	What it controls
`encryption`	`auto`	libsodium-based history encryption
`sqlite`	`auto`	the SQLite storage backends (needs SQLite ≥ 3.35)
`libsecret`	`auto`	remember the encryption passphrase in the keyring
`pwquality`	`auto`	rate a passphrase or a password as it is typed
`gnome-shell`	`true`	the GNOME Shell extension and the mutter clipboard backend
`introspection`	`true`	GIR data
`vapi`	`true`	Vala bindings (requires `introspection`)
`systemd`	`true`	the systemd user unit
`bash-completion`, `zsh-completion`, `fish-completion`	`true`	shell completions

For a minimal build:

meson setup build -Dgnome-shell=false -Dintrospection=false -Dvapi=false

Usage

Default shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`H`	Show the history
`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`G`	Launch the graphical tool
`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`V`	Pop the first item off the history
`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`S`	Mark the active item as a password, if it is a text one
`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`O`	Sync the clipboard to the primary selection
`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`P`	Sync the primary selection to the clipboard
`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`U`	Upload the active item to a pastebin

All of them are configurable in the preferences.

Uploading runs whatever the upload-command preference names, defaulting to curl -sS --data-binary @- https://paste.rs. Any command that takes the item on its standard input and answers the url on its standard output will do — wgetpaste, pastebinit and nc termbin.com 9999 among them.

Inside the graphical tool, which has a few of its own:

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl`+`F`	Search the history
`Ctrl`+`N`	Add a new item
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`N`	Add a new password
`Ctrl`+`0`…`9`	Paste the item at that index
`Ctrl`+`,`	Show the preferences
`Ctrl`+`?`	Show the keyboard shortcuts
`Ctrl`+`W` or `Esc`	Close the window
`Menu` or `Shift`+`F10`	Open the selected item's menu

Command line

gpaste-client                       # print the history
gpaste-client --oneline --use-index # ... one line per item, numbered
gpaste-client search <pattern>      # print matching items
gpaste-client select <uuid>         # put an item back in the clipboard
gpaste-client add <text>            # copy some text
echo hello | gpaste-client          # copy from a pipe
gpaste-client file <path>           # copy a file's contents
gpaste-client delete <uuid>         # forget one item
gpaste-client empty                 # forget everything

gpaste-client ui                    # open the graphical tool
gpaste-client preferences           # open the settings
gpaste-client migrate               # switch storage backend
gpaste-client change-passphrase     # re-key an encrypted history

gpaste-client help lists every subcommand; see also man gpaste-client.

Items are addressed by UUID by default. Pass --use-index to use their position in the history instead.

After upgrading

Restart the daemon so the new version takes over:

gpaste-client daemon-reexec
gpaste-client daemon-version   # confirm which one is running

Development

Three libraries are installed, each with its own pkg-config file, headers, GIR and VAPI:

Library	pkg-config	GIR	Contents
`libgpaste-3`	`gpaste-3`	`GPaste-3`	Core objects, settings, and the D-Bus client for the daemon
`libgpaste-daemon`	`gpaste-daemon`	`GPasteDaemon-1`	The clipboard item hierarchy, the history and the storage backends
`libgpaste-gtk4`	`gpaste-gtk4`	`GPasteGtk-4`	GTK 4 / libadwaita widgets and helpers

Each has a single umbrella header — <gpaste.h>, <gpaste-daemon.h> and <gpaste-gtk4.h> — which is the only one you may include directly.

Run the test suite from the build directory:

ninja -C build test

Each C test binary runs on its own in-memory settings and private D-Bus, so it needs dbus-daemon; a supervisor reaps that bus even if a test crashes. The UI tests open their windows on a private Xvfb and are skipped without it. The history-switcher JavaScript test uses Node.js and actor doubles to check draft preservation, dialog lifecycle, the current history's count and keyboard focus on the switcher row, and is omitted when Node.js is unavailable. The script tests touch no settings, bus or display. None of the tests touches the desktop session.

AGENTS.md documents the coding style and repository conventions in more detail, and each part of the tree has an AGENTS.md of its own beside its code.

Contributing

Bug reports and patches are welcome on GitHub.

Translations go through Weblate, which credits every translator on the project page.

GPaste is what a hundred or so people have made it: thanks to everyone who has contributed.

Releases

The latest release for GNOME 51 is GPaste 51.0 (tarball).

Release announcements and everything else about GPaste are on my blog. See NEWS for the full changelog.