Privacy & exclusions¶

clipboarder watches the system pasteboard. That's privileged. The Privacy section in Settings is how you tell it to not record clipboard activity from specific apps.

Why it matters¶

Password managers (1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane) put secrets on the clipboard when you copy. If clipboarder captures them, they'd live in your history. You don't want that.

How it works¶

For each clipboard event, clipboarder asks macOS "which app is frontmost right now?" (via NSWorkspace.frontmostApplication.bundleIdentifier). If that bundle id is in the excluded list, the event is dropped — never read, never written to the database.

Adding apps¶

In Settings → Privacy:

Add frontmost app — adds whatever app is currently in front. Handy: open the app you want to exclude, then hit this button.
Manual entry — type a bundle id directly. Bundle ids look like com.1password.1password.

Recommended exclusions:

com.1password.1password         # 1Password 8
com.agilebits.onepassword7      # 1Password 7
com.bitwarden.desktop           # Bitwarden
com.dashlane.dashlanephonefinal # Dashlane
com.lastpass.LastPassMacDesktop # LastPass

How to find a bundle id¶

Open the app, then in a terminal:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to bundle identifier of (first application process whose frontmost is true)'

Or from a .app:

mdls -name kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier /Applications/Some\ App.app

What clipboarder still does¶

When an app is excluded, clipboarder:

Does not read the pasteboard during that app's clipboard events
Does not store anything tied to that event
Does not see the bytes — privacy is enforced before the watcher reads

It does still know which app was active (because that's how we decide whether to skip), but nothing else.

Source-of-truth¶

The exclusion list is stored in settings.json:

{
  "excluded_apps": [
    "com.1password.1password",
    "com.bitwarden.desktop"
  ]
}