An encrypted clipboard and chat shared between the devices on your own network. Nothing touches the internet, nothing touches a server, and you can read every line of how it works.
Windows · macOS · Ubuntu — no internet connection required
An MVP built by Vijaya Pardhu
Download
That is the only setup step. Both copies find each other on the network by themselves.
Windows reads the publisher name out of a code-signing certificate, and this project does not have one yet — so the field is blank. It is not a claim that anything is wrong with the file. Once downloaded, right-click it and choose Properties → Details: it says Vijaya Pardhu.
To run it: More info → Run anyway on Windows, right-click →
Open on macOS, chmod +x on Ubuntu. Or
build it
from source and trust a binary you compiled yourself — which is
rather the point of it being readable.
Free forever, MIT licensed. All releases and changelogs →
The problem
You are on one machine and you need something from another. So you message it to yourself, or type out a forty-character URL by hand and get one character wrong. Every workaround sends your clipboard to a server that has no business seeing it.
How it works
Follow along — each step draws what is actually happening between your two machines.
The password never leaves your machine. It is stretched into an encryption key locally. The join code is public — it is only useful to someone who also knows the password.
You pass on the code however you like — read it out, or let them scan the QR. The password is shared separately, and never appears in the QR code.
The request carries a proof, not the password. Only a device holding the right key can produce something you are able to open — and a private room still needs your explicit approval.
Everything is sealed before it leaves. Other devices on the same WiFi receive the same packets and see nothing but ciphertext — no password, no key, no content.
Under the hood
Seven stages, all on your own machine and your own network. The two highlighted ones are where the privacy comes from.
No step in that chain is a server. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to take offline.
Who it is for
Your laptop and the lab machine, working on the same thing. Move error messages, documentation links and code between them without emailing yourself.
Working in a group? One room turns everyone's clipboard into a shared scratchpad for the afternoon. Close the room when you are done and it is gone.
Pair programming, shared debugging, moving a config value onto a test machine. A password-protected room stays private even though the whole floor is on the same WiFi.
For credentials, internal URLs or customer data, the fact that nothing reaches a third-party server is the entire point.
Desktop and laptop. Work machine and personal machine. A Windows box and an Ubuntu box side by side. One room and your clipboard simply follows you between them.
Put a command into an open room and everyone in the room has it instantly — instead of reading it out character by character while everybody mistypes it.
Security
So here is exactly what happens, and exactly what it does not cover. Everything security-related uses the standard library — there is no cryptography dependency to audit or trust.
Overclaiming is worse than a smaller claim, so these are written down plainly rather than buried:
The full model is in SECURITY.md. If you can break one of the five claims above, please report it.
The app
Built with
Every choice here was made so that someone can clone the repository and understand the whole thing. No message broker, no backend, and no cryptography dependency.
Run it yourself
Node.js 20 or newer is the only prerequisite.
git clone https://github.com/Vijayapardhu/Clipboard.git
cd Clipboard && npm install
npm run dev
npm test runs 56 assertions covering key derivation,
tampered packets, forged proofs, chunk reassembly and the membership
rules — in plain Node, with no framework.
Roadmap
The three that are left are the interesting ones — each has an issue explaining where to start and what "done" looks like.
The protocol, the cryptography, the interface and the documentation — all of it. Shared Clipboard exists because moving something between two machines you already own should not require a round trip through somebody else's server.
It is open source so anyone can check that claim for themselves, and so anyone who wants to make it better can.
Collaborators wanted
It works, it is documented, and there is a lot of obvious room to grow — which is a good place to join. You do not need to be an expert. If you know some TypeScript, or React, or you just want to fix a wording mistake, there is something here for you.