Diodon

Fork of Diodon, a GTK+ clipboard manager.

Fork changes

This fork adds the following improvements over the upstream version (PRs were submitted upstream but rejected — the maintainer prefers features as plugins and requires Launchpad issues before PRs):

• Fix 100% CPU on startup with large clipboard history — Truncates text before processing and defers image decoding (lazy loading). The upstream maintainer addressed the issue differently in #50 #51 #52, but our additional optimizations (early truncation, lazy pixbuf decode) remain
• Image preview tooltip — Hover over an image item in the menu to see a scaled preview. Only works with the keyboard shortcut or the Status Icon plugin (not with the default Ayatana indicator, which does not support hover events)
• Pinned clipboard items — Pin items to keep them always visible at the top of the menu, preserved when clearing history. Right-click to pin/unpin, or press p. Manage pinned items in Preferences > Pinned tab
• Status Icon plugin — Alternative to the default Ayatana indicator plugin, using a native GTK status icon. Supports image preview tooltips and proper scroll reset after clearing history. Works on X11/Cinnamon (uses deprecated Gtk.StatusIcon, not compatible with Wayland)
• PRIMARY clipboard sync — When "Use primary selection" is disabled, selected items are still synced to the PRIMARY clipboard for middle-click paste
• Preferences window focus — Reopening preferences brings the existing window to front instead of silently ignoring the action

Installing from source

Dependencies

sudo apt install meson valac libgtk-3-dev libzeitgeist-2.0-dev \
    libpeas-dev libxtst-dev libx11-dev

Build and install

git clone -b main https://github.com/EricBlanquer/diodon.git && cd diodon
meson setup builddir && cd builddir
ninja
sudo ninja install
sudo ldconfig
sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/local/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

Replace system Diodon

If Diodon is already installed via apt, the locally built version in /usr/local takes precedence. Restart Diodon after installation:

pkill -f diodon && diodon &

Building

Diodon uses the Meson build system.

meson setup builddir && cd builddir
ninja
ninja test
sudo ninja install
# only needed after the first ninja install
sudo ldconfig

The unity scope needs to be explicitly enabled if you want to build it

meson configure -Denable-unity-scope=true

On distributions which do not provide packages for application-indicator building of the indicator can be disabled by adjusting builddir creation command:

meson builddir -Ddisable-indicator-plugin=true && cd builddir

For uninstalling type this:

sudo ninja uninstall

Plugins

If you would like to write your own Diodon plugin please refer to the original blog post. Feel free to add your own plugins to the list below.

Plugin	Description
Features	Additional features for the diodon menu.
Numbers	Number clipboard menu items.
Pop Item	Pastes and then removes the active clipboard item.
Paste All	Paste all recent items at once
Edit	Prompts to edit the active item.

Store clipboard items in memory

Diodon uses Zeitgeist to store clipboard items. Per default Zeitgeist persists all events in a database on the hard disc so it is available after a reboot. If you want to store it to memory you need to set environment variable ZEITGEIST_DATABASE_PATH to :memory: with a command like the following (might differ depending on your setup):

echo "ZEITGEIST_DATABASE_PATH=:memory:" >> ~/.pam_environment

Support

Upstream project: diodon-dev/diodon