Installing on iPhone and iPad
Nothing to download, and one detail that catches almost everybody: it has to be Safari, and the Share menu is the entire mechanism. No prompt will appear, however long you wait.
Install it
- Open the app in Safari.
- Tap Share in the toolbar.
- Scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen, then Add.
Chrome and Firefox on iOS cannot install a web app. Both are Safari's engine in a different wrapper, and Apple does not expose home-screen installation to them. If Add to Home Screen is missing from your Share sheet, that is which browser you are in — not a setting, and not something the page can change.
Why there is no App Store app
iOS has never permitted an app to read the pasteboard in the background, and since iOS 16 it shows a banner every time any app reads the clipboard at all. Both are Apple's decisions, they apply to every app on the platform, and no entitlement turns them off.
A native RealtimeClipboard app could therefore add a share-sheet button and a store listing to what the installed web app already does, and nothing more. That is not enough to justify asking you to trust a second binary.
The paste banner you will see — “RealtimeClipboard pasted from…” — is iOS telling you the truth about what just happened. It appears because you asked the app to read the clipboard, and no application can suppress it.
Check it worked
- It opens with no Safari toolbar — full screen, its own window in the app switcher.
- The status bar reads
T1 · paste only, which is correct on iOS and is the ceiling for any app. - It opens with no network connection, showing your existing history.
Your first sync
- Open the app on your computer and note the five-character key.
- Enter the same key on the iPhone.
- Copy something on the computer. It appears on the phone with no further action.
- Going the other way: copy on the phone, open RealtimeClipboard, tap the editor and choose Paste. iOS will show its banner; that is expected.
When it does not work
“Add to Home Screen” is not in the Share sheet
Either you are not in Safari, or the item is further down the list than it looks — scroll the lower section. You can also add it via Edit Actions if it has been hidden.
No install prompt appeared
There is not one. iOS shows no install prompt for any web app, ever. If you are waiting for one, the Share menu is what you are waiting for.
It keeps showing a paste banner
That is iOS 16 and later reporting every clipboard read, by any app. It cannot be turned off from inside an app, and its appearance means the read worked.
Clips do not arrive when the app is closed
A web app is not running when you are not looking at it. It collects what is waiting when you open it; nothing is lost.
Uninstalling
Long-press the icon and delete it. Its storage goes with it. Safari's own copy of the site data can be cleared under Settings → Safari → Advanced → Website Data.
Every other platform: the installation guide. If iPhone-to-Mac clipboard sync is what you were actually looking for, that is a different feature and it is here. Something wrong or out of date? Open an issue.