System tray & keyboard shortcuts

Icon States

Clipshot uses five tray states:

State	What it means	Tray look
Ready	Sync is enabled and idle	static blue icon
Sending	This device is sending clipboard content	animated orange (yellow) icon
Receiving	This device is receiving clipboard content	animated blue icon
No peers	Sync is enabled but nothing is connected	static red cross icon
Paused	You paused sync manually	static red icon (not animated)

The tray icon tooltip is Clipshot - P2P Clipboard Sync.

Tray menu items:

Open Dashboard
Copy Last Synced
Toggle Sync
Manage Account
Quit

Platform behavior:

macOS: the tray menu opens on right-click
Linux and Windows: the tray menu opens on left-click

On macOS, the Dock icon has its own menu:

Open Dashboard
Toggle Sync
separator
Quit

Note: the Dock menu does not include Copy Last Synced or Manage Account. Like the tray menu, the Dock menu uses a static Toggle Sync label.

Dock Progress Bar

During active transfers, Clipshot shows overall transfer progress on the app window taskbar/dock indicator where the platform supports it.

What it does:

shows combined progress for all active transfers
clears automatically when transfers finish
on macOS, Clipshot also prevents idle sleep while a transfer is running

Keyboard shortcuts

Cmd+Shift+S / Ctrl+Shift+S: Toggle Sync

By default, Cmd+Shift+S (macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+S (Windows/Linux) pauses or resumes clipboard sync.

You can change this shortcut in Settings → General → Toggle Sync Hotkey.

If the hotkey changes, restart Clipshot.

Cmd+B / Ctrl+B: Paste as Path

When you copy an image or file, Clipshot syncs it and saves a local copy at ~/.clipshot/sync/img_YYYYMMDD_XXXX.png. The clipboard still holds the original image/file data, so two different paste shortcuts now do different things:

Shortcut	Pastes	Use case
Cmd+V / Ctrl+V	the image / file data (normal clipboard paste)	dropping a screenshot inline in chat, docs, or an editor
Cmd+B / Ctrl+B	the file path as text (e.g. `~/.clipshot/sync/img_20260502_339b.png`)	attaching a file, uploading, or referencing it in a terminal command

Default hotkey: Cmd+B on macOS, Ctrl+B on Windows/Linux.

How it works:

You copy an image or file → Clipshot syncs it and saves to ~/.clipshot/sync/.
Press Cmd+B → on macOS and Windows Clipshot saves your current clipboard, temporarily writes the path into the clipboard, simulates Cmd+V / Ctrl+V, then restores the original image/file content. On Linux the default is to type the path as keystrokes and leave the clipboard untouched (no extra entries in a clipboard manager); it falls back to the clipboard route if typing fails. See paste_path_mode in Settings.
The path is pasted as text into the active app — works in editors, terminals, chat apps, file dialogs.

The same path exists on every device in the group. An item shared from a phone with Share → Clipshot lands under ~/.clipshot/sync/ on each desktop, so Cmd+B / Ctrl+B there pastes its path as soon as the file has arrived — the phone’s own pasteboard gets that path once the first desktop has the item (see Phones and tablets).

Example workflow (screenshot → chat → terminal):

Take a screenshot — image is on your clipboard, Clipshot saves it to ~/.clipshot/sync/img_20260502_339b.png.
Cmd+V in a chat app → screenshot is pasted inline as an image.
Cmd+B in your terminal → ~/.clipshot/sync/img_20260502_339b.png is pasted as text, ready for scp, open, mv, etc.

Change or disable the hotkey:

GUI: Settings → General → Paste Path Hotkey dropdown — pick a different combo or the blank option to disable.
settings.toml: paste_path_hotkey = "cmd+b" (or any combo); empty string / removed line disables it.
Restart Clipshot after changing.

The hotkey works in the desktop GUI and in clipshot daemon headless mode.

macOS permissions required for hotkeys:

Permission	Where to grant	What breaks without it
Input Monitoring	System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring	All global hotkeys silently stop working (Cmd+Shift+S, Cmd+B)
Accessibility	System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility	Cmd+B cannot simulate the paste keystroke

Steps to grant:

Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring, click +, add Clipshot.
Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, click +, add Clipshot.
Restart Clipshot after granting either permission.

When a permission is missing, an amber PermissionBanner appears at the top of the app. Click the banner to jump directly to the relevant System Settings pane, or click Restart once you have granted the permission. The banner clears automatically once both permissions are granted.

macOS: while another app holds secure keyboard entry. A password field (Chrome, a password manager, a terminal in secure-input mode) can turn on macOS Secure Event Input, and while it is on no key event reaches Clipshot’s listener. Clipshot notices this and registers Cmd+B (and the sync toggle) a second way for as long as it lasts, so the shortcut keeps working — and a one-line amber note appears at the top of the app saying who holds it: «Secure keyboard entry is on (Google Chrome) — Clipshot holds Cmd+B until it ends». If the combo could not be taken over, the note reads «… Cmd+B cannot reach Clipshot until it ends» instead. There is nothing to act on; the note clears by itself when the other app releases secure input. (In the HTTP API this is paste_hotkey_note on GET /api/status, absent on every other platform.)

Header: Sync toggle button

The top header has one labelled toggle button — there is no state pill up there (the connection status is said once, on Home).

The button:

when sync is active it reads Pause with a pause icon — click to pause
when sync is paused it reads Resume with a play icon, tinted amber — click to resume
during a transfer the icon is a spinner, and the label still reads Pause
its tooltip spells out the current state (Ready, Sending, Receiving, No peers, Paused)

Toggling between the file content and its path

There is no hotkey for this. Clipshot has exactly two global shortcuts — the sync toggle (hotkey) and the paste-path key (paste_path_hotkey) — and the paste-path key already covers the case it was meant for: Cmd+V / Ctrl+V pastes the image or file itself, Cmd+B / Ctrl+B pastes its path, and on macOS and Windows your original clipboard content is put back after the press.

Older documentation described a clipboard_hotkey setting in settings.toml. No such setting exists: it is not part of the Settings struct, so a line like that in your config file is simply ignored.