Eruditto

A free, lightweight clipboard manager for Linux inspired by Ditto Clipboard Manager.

Status: Active development — v1 in progress.

What it does

• Monitors your clipboard continuously in the background
• Stores clipboard history (text and images) locally in SQLite
• Opens a fast search popup with Ctrl+Shift+V
• Slash-mode search (type / to filter, Enter to paste, Esc to close)
• Vim-style navigation (j/k to move, Enter to paste) — opt-in in settings
• Image clipboard support via xclip (paste into browsers, editors, terminals)
• System tray icon with quick access to settings and quit
• Autostart at login (XDG autostart + systemd user-unit fallback)
• Never sends your data anywhere — fully offline, local only

Requirements

To run

• Linux with X11 (Wayland support via XWayland)
• OpenGL capable GPU (virtually all modern hardware)
• xclip (pre-installed on Ubuntu; used for image clipboard ownership)
• xdotool (for auto-paste after selecting a clip)

To build from source

• Go 1.25 or newer
• X11 development headers: sudo apt install xorg-dev libgl1-mesa-dev

Build

go build -o eruditto ./cmd/eruditto

Run

./eruditto

Debug mode

./eruditto -debug

Desktop integration

By default, running ./eruditto does not touch your system. Icons and .desktop files are opt-in.

Install (show in app launcher + autostart-ready)

./eruditto --install-desktop
update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/
xdg-desktop-menu forceupdate

This writes:

• ~/.local/share/applications/eruditto.desktop — app launcher entry
• ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/{32x32,64x64,128x128}/apps/eruditto.png — icons
• ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/index.theme — only if missing; seeded from the system copy at /usr/share/icons/hicolor/index.theme (never overwrites an existing one)

Uninstall (remove only what we wrote)

./eruditto --uninstall-desktop
update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/
xdg-desktop-menu forceupdate

All files are byte-matched before removal. If you hand-edited a file, it survives uninstall. The index.theme is only removed if it still matches the system copy byte-for-byte (meaning we seeded it).

Changing the embedded icons

Icons are embedded at build time via //go:embed from:

internal/tray/assets/icons/
├── small_white_icon.png   (32x32)
├── medium_white_icon.png  (64x64)
└── larger_white_icon.png  (128x128)

After replacing these files, you must:

1. Delete the old PNGs from disk: rm -f ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/*/apps/eruditto.png
2. Rebuild: go build -o eruditto ./cmd/eruditto
3. Reinstall: ./eruditto --install-desktop

The install skips files that already exist on disk. Stale icons from a previous install won't be overwritten — they must be removed first.

Autostart at login

Toggle "Launch Eruditto at login" in the settings UI. This immediately writes or removes:

• Primary: ~/.config/autostart/eruditto.desktop (XDG autostart spec)
• Fallback: ~/.config/systemd/user/io.github.darwinovalle.eruditto.service (if XDG dir is unavailable)

On every launch, Eruditto reconciles the system state with the persisted preference — so if the autostart file goes missing (e.g. after a system update), it gets recreated automatically.

Note: os.Executable() resolves to the real running binary path. During development (go build), this points to the built binary in your project directory. For a proper install, use --install-desktop or a system package.

Tests

go test -count=1 -timeout 30s ./internal/...

Project layout

cmd/eruditto/          — main entry point, flag handling, startup wiring
internal/autostart/     — XDG + systemd autostart management
internal/clipboard/     — clipboard reader (xclip-based)
internal/domain/        — settings keys, domain types
internal/hotkeys/       — global hotkey registration
internal/images/        — image detection and processing
internal/settings/      — SQLite-backed settings service
internal/tray/          — system tray, embedded icons, install/uninstall
internal/ui/            — Fyne UI: popup, settings, auto-paste, theming
pkg/xdg/                — XDG base-directory helpers

License

MIT