Install

UniClipboard ships a desktop app and a uniclip CLI for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Pick the path for your platform — every installer below points at the same release artefacts on GitHub Releases.

UniClipboard is in active alpha. Things will move; sync state may not survive every upgrade. Treat it as "useful, not infrastructure."

Pick your platform

The easiest path on macOS is the official Homebrew tap.

brew tap UniClipboard/tap

# Desktop app (the .app bundle)
brew install --cask uniclipboard

# Or, just the CLI — installs the `uniclip` command
brew install uniclipboard

Or install in a single command without tapping first:

brew install --cask UniClipboard/tap/uniclipboard   # GUI
brew install UniClipboard/tap/uniclipboard          # CLI

The cask and the formula can coexist — install both if you want the GUI plus the uniclip command for terminal flows.

Prefer to download the installer manually? Grab the latest .dmg from the Releases page and drag the app into /Applications.

First-launch permissions

On first launch macOS will prompt for two permissions. Both are required for clipboard sync to function:

Accessibility — needed to read the system clipboard.
Input Monitoring — needed for the global quick-panel shortcut.

If you grant them later in System Settings → Privacy & Security, quit and reopen the app for the change to take effect.

Two options on Windows:

MSI installer — UniClipboard_<version>_x64_en-US.msi. Standard installer flow; sets up Start Menu and uninstall entries.
Portable ZIP — extract anywhere and run UniClipboard.exe. No registry writes; useful for USB sticks or locked-down machines.

Both artefacts are code-signed.

Download the one you want from the Releases page.

SmartScreen may warn the first time you run a new release. Click More info → Run anyway if the publisher matches the signed identity. Verify the signature in Properties → Digital Signatures if you're unsure.

The recommended path is Snap. The Snap is built with strict confinement on core22 and bundles its own GTK + WebKit stack, so it runs the same on Ubuntu 20.04+, Debian 11+, RHEL 9, openSUSE Leap, and similar.

sudo snap install uniclipboard

Don't have snapd? See the Snapcraft install guide for your distribution.

Prefer not to use Snap? An AppImage is also published with each release. Download it from the Releases page, mark it executable, and run it:

chmod +x UniClipboard-*.AppImage
./UniClipboard-*.AppImage

Headless / server install (CLI only)

For servers, SSH sessions, or anything without a desktop, install just the uniclip CLI from Releases — look for the uniclip-<version>-<arch> artefact (statically linked against musl). The CLI runs the daemon in-process, so no GUI is required.

Build from source

You'll need Bun and a Rust toolchain (rustup default stable).

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/UniClipboard/UniClipboard.git
cd UniClipboard

Install dependencies

bun install

Run in dev mode, or produce a release build

# Live-reloading desktop app for local development
bun tauri dev

# Bundle a release artefact for the host platform
bun tauri build

The release build lands under src-tauri/target/release/bundle/. See CONTRIBUTING.md for branch / commit / PR conventions.

Verify the install

After installing, confirm the CLI is on your PATH:

uniclip --version

For the GUI, launching it should open the Create a new space / Join an existing space screen on first run. If a previous installation already created a space, the dashboard opens directly.

Where data lives

UniClipboard stores its encrypted database, search index, and logs in the platform's standard application-data directory under app.uniclipboard.desktop:

Platform	Path
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/app.uniclipboard.desktop/`
Linux	`~/.local/share/app.uniclipboard.desktop/`
Windows	`%LOCALAPPDATA%\app.uniclipboard.desktop\`

Logs sit under a logs/ subdirectory. If you set the UC_PROFILE env var (e.g. UC_PROFILE=dev), the directory name is suffixed (e.g. app.uniclipboard.desktop-dev) so dev and prod can run side by side.

Continue to Quick start to create your first space and sync your first clip.