Installing RealtimeClipboard

Start here: do you need to install anything?

Probably not. Open the app on two devices, type the same short key on each, and they share a clipboard. Everything below is about one feature — background capture — and whether your platform can do it.

Each platform has its own guide below in short, and a full one of its own — what a working install looks like, how to get the first clip across, and the specific things that stop it.

What "background capture" actually means

In a browser, RealtimeClipboard can only read your clipboard while its window is focused. That is not a limitation of this app — it is a rule every browser enforces on every website, because a page that could silently read your clipboard would harvest every password you copy. So the browser version works like this: you copy something, you switch to RealtimeClipboard, and it picks it up as it comes into focus.

A native desktop app is not bound by that rule. The Windows, macOS and Linux app watches the system clipboard continuously, so copying in any application sends it immediately, with no switching.

Which means the desktop app reads every copy you make while it is running — including passwords you copy for unrelated reasons. It is encrypted before it leaves your machine and never written to disk, but that is a real thing to agree to. The app says so in a guide on first launch, with the switch in the dialog: App means nothing leaves the machine until you paste it in, and it is also in the tray menu as Share what I copy, so you can pause sharing before copying a password without opening the window.

Windows

Download the .msi from the download page. Background capture works with no caveats and no permission prompt — Windows is the platform the desktop app is most worth having on.

The app needs no administrator rights and installs no driver or service. It makes outbound connections on 443 only, to a single hostname, which is the shape IT departments allowlist. If SmartScreen warns you, check the file came from the official releases page before clicking through.

Full guide: installing on Windows →

macOS

One .dmg covers both Intel and Apple Silicon — the build is universal, so there is no second download to look for.

macOS needs no special permission to read the clipboard, so there is no prompt to grant. That cuts both ways: nothing in the operating system would tell you an app had started reading every copy you make, which is why this one says so itself, in a guide on first launch, with the App switch in the dialog.

Full guide: installing on macOS →

Linux

A .deb, .rpm or AppImage from the releases page. There is no Flathub, Snap or AUR package, and no command here pretending there is. The app needs webkit2gtk 4.1, which is roughly Ubuntu 22.04 or Fedora 36 and newer; on anything older use the browser or the command-line client.

The Wayland caveat, stated plainly. On X11 the app is told when the clipboard changes and background capture works. On Wayland it depends on your compositor: KDE and the wlroots-based ones expose a protocol for it, and GNOME does not — there is no way for any application to monitor the clipboard on GNOME Wayland. The app detects this and says so in its status bar rather than silently doing nothing, and falls back to capturing on focus, exactly like the browser.

Full guide: installing on Linux →

Android and ChromeOS

There is no Android app, and there is not going to be one. Since Android 10, only the app you are currently using, the active keyboard, or an accessibility service may read the clipboard. A RealtimeClipboard app would therefore be a share-sheet button and an icon — everything else it could do, the installed web app already does.

1. Open the app in Chrome.
2. Tap the menu, then Add to Home screen.

It then has its own icon and window, and works offline. To send something, paste it into the app or use Android's share menu.

Full guide: Android and ChromeOS →

iPhone and iPad

Same answer, for the same reason: iOS has never permitted background pasteboard reads, and since iOS 16 it shows a banner every time any app reads the clipboard at all.

1. Open the app in Safari. Chrome and Firefox on iOS cannot install a web app.
2. Tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.

iOS shows no install prompt of its own, so if you are waiting for one to appear, it will not. The Share menu is the whole mechanism.

Full guide: iPhone and iPad →

Servers, SSH sessions and scripts

npx realtimeclipboard D75LV

For machines with no clipboard and no screen. It reads standard input and writes standard output, so it composes with everything else:

echo "deploy key" | npx realtimeclipboard send D75LV
npx realtimeclipboard watch D75LV --once > token.txt

It needs Node 22 or newer. It is not a separate implementation — it imports the same encryption and transport files the browser runs, so a clip sent from a server is indistinguishable from one sent by a laptop.

Full guide: the command line →

Running your own relay

The relay passes encrypted clips between your devices. It cannot read them — it only ever sees a room hash and ciphertext — but if you would rather not take that on trust, run it yourself:

docker run -p 8000:8000 ghcr.io/akshaynikhare/realtimeclipboard-relay

Then point the app at it under Settings → Relay. There is a docker-compose.yml with automatic TLS and a Helm chart in the deploy directory. Pin it to one replica unless you have given it Redis.

Full guide: running your own relay →

Ready to install: the download page. Something wrong or out of date here? Open an issue.