Copy Pasta

Copy Pasta is a small Avalonia desktop utility for capturing selected text into an app-local history without using the system clipboard. It reads selections through native platform services and types saved entries back into the active app one character at a time.

The app is intentionally hotkey-driven and does not auto-capture.

Features

• App-local text history capped at 50 entries
• No clipboard dependency for capture or typing
• Character-by-character output through simulated keyboard input
• Optional text styling metadata capture when the source app exposes it through UI Automation
• Persistent history under the current user's application data folder

Platform Support

Platform	UI	Global hotkeys	Selection capture	Text output
Windows	Supported	Supported	Supported through UI Automation and native edit controls	Supported through SendInput
macOS	Supported	Supported through a keyboard event tap	Supported through Accessibility selected text	Supported through Core Graphics keyboard events
Linux	Supported on X11	Supported through XGrabKey	Supported through the X11 PRIMARY selection	Supported through XTest keyboard events

Linux support currently targets X11. Wayland does not expose a general global hotkey, selected-text, or synthetic-keyboard API that this app can use without desktop-environment-specific portals or extensions.

Hotkeys

• Ctrl+Alt+C: capture the current selection
• Ctrl+Alt+V: type the selected history item
• Ctrl+Alt+X: stop typing

Copy Pasta does not auto-capture. Capture only runs when you press Ctrl+Alt+C.

Notes

• Selection capture depends on the target app exposing selected text through the host OS accessibility or selection APIs. Some apps, games, terminals, remote desktops, elevated/admin windows, and sandboxed apps may not expose it.
• The clipboard is not used for capture or typing.
• App-internal rich capture is limited to text styling metadata exposed by the platform. Arbitrary rich content such as images, files, HTML, and RTF is not available through a general non-clipboard selection API.
• macOS requires Accessibility permission. It may also require Input Monitoring permission depending on OS version and security settings.
• Linux requires X11 plus libX11 and libXtst. Text output currently supports common ASCII characters.
• App icon: Spaghetti icon by Freepik from Flaticon. Free for personal and commercial use with attribution.

Code Layout

• Core: shared history models and platform service contracts
• UI: Avalonia app and main window
• Platforms/Windows: Windows UI Automation, Win32 hotkey, and SendInput services
• Platforms/MacOS: Accessibility and Core Graphics services
• Platforms/Linux: X11 and XTest services
• Platforms/Unsupported: fallback services for unsupported desktop environments

Requirements

• Windows, macOS, or Linux
• .NET SDK 10 or later

Build and Run

dotnet build .\CopyPasta.slnx
dotnet run --project .\CopyPasta.csproj -f net10.0-windows

Publish

dotnet publish .\CopyPasta.csproj -c Release -f net10.0-windows -r win-x64 --self-contained false
dotnet publish .\CopyPasta.csproj -c Release -f net10.0 -r linux-x64 --self-contained false
dotnet publish .\CopyPasta.csproj -c Release -f net10.0 -r osx-arm64 --self-contained false

Published apps will be under bin\Release\<target-framework>\<runtime>\publish.