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Guide·06 of 10·Part of Keep

What you copied

Recents under letters, pins under numbers, and a search that reads screenshots.

01·The first minute

  1. 01link

    Paste something from earlier

    ⇧⌘VS

    The strip opens along the bottom with your recent clips under the home row, newest first. A letter pastes it as plain text and closes the strip.

    Mail

    Hi Dana,

    Send the invoice to

    A
    swift build -c release
    S
    hello@example.com
    D
    The launch review moves to Thursday
    F
    A8F2CD34EF
    G
    lodestar.vaccone.software

    Writing, and something from earlier is needed

02·When you are ready

  1. 02link

    Pin what you paste constantly

    ⇧⌘V⌘Sp

    ⌘ with a card's letter opens its actions: pin, delete, or never save from that app again. A text card offers E to edit it; an image offers E to view it and S to save it. Pins climb the left edge under 1 to 5 and never move.

    Shift command V, then command S, then p

  2. 03link

    See an image large, or save it by name

    ⇧⌘V⌘AE

    On an image card, E opens it across the display, fitted whole; pinch to zoom and pan with two fingers, and esc steps back. S turns the band into a file name, already filled with where it came from and when: return alone saves it, or edit the name, where a slash is a subfolder and .jpg writes a JPEG.

    Shift command V, then command A, then E

  3. 04link

    Paste as copied

    ⇧⌘V⇧S

    The shifted letter pastes the clip with its formatting, whatever the source app offered.

    Shift command V, then shift S

  4. 05link

    Search the history

    ⇧⌘V/

    Slash searches. Matches keep their letters, return pastes the first, and ⌥ with a letter pastes a match without leaving the search.

    Shift command V, then /

  5. 06Few know thislink

    Find a screenshot by its words

    ⇧⌘V/

    An image is read once, a beat after it lands, and its text joins the search. A screenshot of an error is found by the error. A browser copy carries the site it came from, so github finds everything copied there.

    Shift command V, then /

03·The fine print

What nobody finds by pressing keys

  • Copies reorder the strip. Pastes never do, so the positions hold still while you use them.
  • A copy of several files stays one card that pastes all of them.
  • A copy that is only a color, a timestamp, a measurement or a sum keeps its text where every card does, and Lodestar leaves a note beneath it in its own serif: a color's name beside a swatch, how long ago a moment was with your clock and any zones you keep, a measurement in your units, or the answer. The note never pastes.
  • Search finds a color by its name, so orange finds the orange you copied as a hex.
  • Anything a password manager marks concealed is never recorded. Nor is anything from an app you exclude, or containing a phrase you exclude.
  • In a password field macOS blocks synthetic keystrokes, so Lodestar puts the clip on the clipboard and asks you to press ⌘V yourself rather than failing silently.
  • The history lives outside your dotfiles, is excluded from backups, and is readable only by you.
  • ⌘V inside the search pastes the clipboard's text into the query. The same works in the launcher, commands, Ask, and hints.

04·Why

Why it works this way

The two things you are most likely to want, a pin or what you just copied, sit at the same corner, so there is one place to look. This is the one gesture outside lode, because pasting happens in the middle of typing.

05·Settings

The settings behind this page

Read from the schema Lodestar itself emits. The settings window shows the same rows, and each wears the path it writes.

clipboard.enabled
boolean

⇧⌘V opens the clipboard strip. The one Lodestar binding outside the lode key, so it is also the one that can collide with an app; false gives ⇧⌘V back.

$ lodestar config set clipboard.enabled true
clipboard.save-to
string

The folder an image saved from the clipboard strip lands in. A name typed with a slash in it, or starting with / or ~, chooses another place for that save.

$ lodestar config set clipboard.save-to …
clipboard.exclude
object

Substring → true, matched case-insensitively against the clip. The same shape web.routes uses.

$ lodestar config set clipboard.exclude …
clipboard.exclude-apps
object

Bundle id → true. Nothing copied in these apps is ever written to disk.

$ lodestar config set clipboard.exclude-apps …
clipboard.time-zones
object

Zone identifier (Asia/Tokyo) → true. A clip that is only a timestamp is read into your zone, UTC, and these.

$ lodestar config set clipboard.time-zones …
app.units
· metric · imperial

The units a copied measurement is read into on its card. Empty follows your region.

$ lodestar config set app.units …
clipboard.max-size-mb
number

Disk the clipboard history may claim; the oldest clips are dropped to stay under it. Pins are never dropped.

$ lodestar config set clipboard.max-size-mb …