What is the "Clipboard History Manager" add-on and how can I use it?

This extension is a powerful clipboard monitoring extension that indexes each clipboard item to its internal database. A user can search among all the stored items later and update the clipboard content with the searched query any time later. This extension by default stores up to1000 last saved clipboard content. To prevent the extension from removing important content, use the pinning icon. Pinned items are not being removed from the database. To use the extension you will need to install a native component. This component is the monitoring tool that notifies the extension that a new clipboard is placed and it is the time to store and index it. To install this native component, just install the extension and follow the steps that are shown in the installer dialog. Read the next FAQ for more info. Note that the native component is only available for Mac and Windows operating systems at the moment. It is possible to compile it for Linux too. If anybody is interested in working on the Linux port, please open a GitHub pull request.

What's new in this version?

Please check the Logs section.

Why does this extension need an additional component to be installed? Is it safe? How can I install it?

For security reasons browsers do not allow extensions from reading clipboard content unless there is a user action involved. This is rational behavior to protect users from malicious extensions. However for this extension to operate it needs to monitor your clipboard. So it requires a native component to get notified when the clipboard content is updated. This small component is written in c++ and basically uses a cross-platform c++ library to copy/paste clipboard content called dacap/clip. The only addition to this library is a small module to monitor clipboard changes. This OS-dependent observer uses an event-based technique instead of usually used polling method to get notified of the changes. In short, the c++ component monitors the clipboard changes and returns the new content to the extension side and gets terminated. To see the actual code visit https://github.com/lunu-bounir/clipboard-helper/blob/master/helper.mm. This c++ project is being compiled to OS-dependent executables using the online travis-ci.org compilers; https://travis-ci.org/lunu-bounir/clipboard-helper. Note that you can compile the project yourself too! Just follow the run_osx.sh or run_win.bat scripts.

To install the native component in Windows, download the latest win.zip archive and extract it into a local directory. Double-click on the install.bat file to place the executable in the right place. Then restart the extension. You can completely remove the native component anytime by pressing the uninstall.bat file. To install the native component in Mac, download the mac.zip file and extract it into a local directory. Now open a terminal window and drop the install.sh file into the terminal window and press the Enter key. Same as Windows version, to remove the component, use uninstall.sh file. For both operating systems, the installer script prints the exact locations where the native component is placed. Also in the Windows version it prints the two new registries that it writes for both Firefox and Chrome to detect the native side.

How does the extension searches in the database? How can I use this feature

As stated earlier, the most highlighted section of this extension is the built-in database searching capability. When a new item is appended to the IndexedDB database, the extension also parses the clipboard content and indexes it. The parser first detects the clipboard language and then detects useful terms in this entry. Internally this extension uses Xapian project to index your database. This is a powerful open-source indexer that is designed to work with very large databases. Note that the Xapian project is compiled in JavaScript. This extension stores both the actual database and the indexed database in the browser storage area. So by removing the extension from your browser, all these databases are being deleted permanently and there will be no way to restore them. You can, however, use the import and export features in the options page to store the databases before removing the extension and restore it later

What is the use of the pinning button next to each clipboard entry?

If you need the extension to keep a clipboard entry forever, use the pinning button. Pinned items are not being cleaned up automatically. To free up the storage, the extension deletes old items when you reach 1000 items. To search only among pinned entries append keyword:pinned to your search query.

What are the supported languages?

At this point the extension supports language parsing for "arabic", "armenian", "basque", "catalan", "danish", "dutch", "earlyenglish", "english", "finnish", "french", "german", "german2", "hungarian", "indonesian", "irish", "italian", "kraaij_pohlmann", "lithuanian", "lovins", "nepali", "norwegian", "porter", "portuguese", "romanian", "russian", "spanish", "swedish", "tamil", "turkish".

Note that upon searching a new query, the extension detects the most possible input language of the query and uses that language to parse the query

What happens if I copy a very large chunk of data to the clipboard?

The c++ component only returns clipboard entries with a maximum limit of 1Mbyte in size. You can reduce the maximum acceptable clipboard size in the options page, though you cannot increase the size. This is a limitation to protect large data transfer over 1MBytes. If for any reason you need to store over the limitation, split the content into several smaller parts and then store each chunk in the clipboard.

What are the searching operators that I can use?

• AND and NOT: will return results that contain both 'term1' and 'term2'.
• XOR (exclusive OR): will return results that contain either 'term1' or 'term2', but not both.
• OR: will return results that contain either 'term1' or 'term2'.
• Brackets: Change search ordering like term1 AND (term2 OR term3)
• NEAR: will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2.
• ADJ: will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the same order as in the query
• Phrases: According to the Xapian documentation a phrase surrounded with double quotes (like this: "my phrase") will return results that match everything containing "that exact phrase"

Note that you can combine search operators with keywords too.

How does clipboard entries get organized when I open the manager window?

The most recent clipboard entry is shown in the first place. The Clippard content are being ordered from newest to the oldest entry. When you scroll down the list, the extension fetches items from the database and appends to the UI. This way the extension is not being freezed when you have hundreds of items. If you copy an entry that is already in the database, its timestamp gets updated so it will be pulled to the top of the list without allocating any extra disk space. Note that this extension uses the MD5 check on the clipboard content to prevent duplicated contents from being stored. When performing a search, the entries are being listed based on their matching weight. There is no time ordering for search results

How can I place entries from the UI to the clipboard?

Use double-click or simply press the Enter key. This extension is designed to be used without any mouse interaction. Upon opening the UI, the search box is focused, so you can start typing your search query. Use Up and Down arrow keys to find the entry that you are interested in and then press the Enter key to place the item in the operating system and the UI gets closed automatically.

Can I open the UI in a popup window instead of the browser popup (like the screenshot)?

You can change the opening mode in the options page. Or even better, define a global shortcut to open the window in the popup mode in the "Keyboard shortcuts" section of the extension manager of your browser. This way you can open the UI with a keyboard shortcut that works globally (not just inside the browser) and perform a search and press the Enter key to place the item to the clipboard.

on macOS Catalina I am getting this message: "helper" cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified. How can I fix this?

Go to "/Users/[username]/.config/desktop.clipboard.manager" directory and right-click on the helper executable and press the open item once to allow execution for this file.