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I finally stopped messaging myself to move text between devices

236 points Biacoder 168 comments
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You know that thing where you find a link on your phone and need it on your laptop, so you... message it to yourself? Email it? I had a "Notes to self" Telegram chat dedicated to this for years. It got weird when I started replying to myself.

Apple has Universal Clipboard. Samsung has their thing. But I use a Mac at work, Linux, Windows (until Valve takes the Gaming) at home, and an Android phone - none of that helps.

So I built DecentPaste. Clipboard sync that works across Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Written in Rust. No cloud, no account, stays on your local WiFi.

Also doubles as a clipboard history manager - which honestly I use just as much as the sync itself. Copy something, get distracted, come back 10 minutes later and it's still there.

Alpha - I use it daily but there are rough edges.

How it works

  1. Install on your devices
  2. Pair with a 4-6-digit PIN
  3. Copy on one → paste on all

That's basically it.

What it does

  • P2P only - your clipboard never leaves your network. No server to breach because there's no server.
  • E2E encrypted - X25519 key exchange, AES-256-GCM. Keys derived locally via ECDH, never transmitted.
  • Share sheet support - share from any app to DecentPaste, or use "Share Now" in the app.

Oh and it's ~15MB, not 200MB. Tauri, not Electron. Your RAM will thank you.

Tech

Rust backend:

  • Tauri v2 for the app
  • libp2p - mDNS for discovery, gossipsub for broadcast, request-response for pairing
  • IOTA Stronghold - encrypted storage with Argon2id key derivation

First time using libp2p. Learned a lot about gossipsub mesh formation the hard way.

What doesn't work yet

  • Text only for now
  • Devices need same WiFi
  • No iOS yet (app store testflight only)
  • No background sync on mobile - saves battery, keeps it simple

Links

GitHub: https://github.com/decentpaste/decentpaste

Website: https://decentpaste.com

Play Store / App Store not publicly listed yet. You can grab the Android APK directly from the website, or DM me your email to join the closed testing - helps me get listed faster.

Apache 2.0. If something breaks, open an issue.