ClipZy: Your CTRL Stash

A simple browser extension for people who copy-paste the same text over and over — email signatures, template replies, addresses, code snippets, license keys, a character's name in Japanese, anything.

• Save instantly: select any text on a page, right-click ClipZy → "Save…".
• Paste back instantly: right-click any text field, hover ClipZy ▸, and click a saved snippet — it's inserted right where your cursor was. No copy step, no side panel required.
• Type it out (opt-in): give a snippet a trigger like ;sig and just type it anywhere, followed by space/tab/enter, to expand it automatically.
• Fill-in-the-blank snippets: use {{name}} in a snippet and it's auto-selected after pasting so you can type straight over it.
• Keyboard shortcuts: Alt+Shift+1–4 instantly pastes one of your top 4 pinned snippets — no menu, no click.
• Browse everything: click the toolbar icon to open a side panel listing every snippet, with search, pin, copy and delete.
• Local by default, with an optional sync toggle that uses your browser's built-in account sync (Chrome Sync / Edge Sync / Vivaldi Sync) so your snippets follow you to another computer signed into the same account. No external server, no account to create, no data sent to any third party.
• Export / import your snippets as a JSON file any time.

Works on Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, and any other Chromium-based browser that supports Manifest V3 extensions and the Side Panel API.

Install (unpacked, for development or personal use)

1. Download or clone this repository.
2. Open your browser's extensions page:
   • Chrome: chrome://extensions
   • Edge: edge://extensions
   • Vivaldi: vivaldi://extensions
3. Turn on Developer mode (top right).
4. Click Load unpacked and select the snippet-vault folder.
5. Pin the extension to your toolbar so the icon is easy to reach.

How to use it

1. Save text: highlight text on any web page → right-click → ClipZy → "Save…". A green checkmark badge confirms it saved.
2. Paste it back: right-click inside any text box, search bar, or editable field → hover ClipZy ▸ → click the snippet you want. It's inserted at your cursor immediately — this is the fast Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V replacement. Right-clicking somewhere that isn't a text field copies the snippet to your clipboard instead, so Ctrl+V still works right after. Pinned snippets (★) and your 15 most recent show in the menu; everything else is one click away in the full panel.
3. Open the full panel: click the ClipZy icon in the toolbar, or choose "Open ClipZy panel…" at the bottom of the right-click menu. The panel stays open as you browse other tabs.

   Browsers only allow extension panels to open on a real click, not on hover — that's a platform restriction (for security/privacy reasons), not a limitation of this extension.

4. In the panel: Copy any card back to your clipboard, pin important snippets to keep them at the top (and in the right-click menu), delete ones you no longer need, or use the search bar to filter by content or by the site you copied it from.
5. Add text manually any time using the box at the top of the panel — you don't have to copy it from a web page first.
6. Open Settings (gear icon) to turn on cross-device sync, or to export/import your snippets as JSON, or to clear everything.

About sync / cloud storage

This extension keeps things simple and privacy-friendly: instead of running its own backend, it uses chrome.storage.sync, the sync mechanism already built into Chrome/Edge/Vivaldi. When you turn on Sync across my devices:

• Your snippets sync through your browser's own account system — the same system that syncs your bookmarks and passwords.
• Nothing is sent to any server operated by this extension.
• The browser sync API has quota limits (roughly 100KB total, ~8KB per snippet, ~100 items). Very large snippet collections should stay on local storage — the extension will warn you and fall back to local storage automatically if a sync write fails.

If you'd rather build true cloud storage (e.g. Firebase, Supabase) so snippets sync even across different browser accounts, see docs/cloud-storage-notes.md — it's a natural next step but requires a backend and an account system, which is out of scope for this lightweight version.

Project structure

snippet-vault/
├── manifest.json       # Manifest V3 config
├── background.js       # Context menu (save + paste-back submenu) + save logic
├── sidepanel.html       # Side panel UI
├── sidepanel.css        # Side panel styling
├── sidepanel.js          # Side panel logic (CRUD, search, sync, export)
├── icons/                # Toolbar / store icons
└── generate_icons.py     # Script used to generate icons/*.png

Permissions used, and why

Permission	Why it's needed
contextMenus	Builds the "ClipZy" right-click menu and its paste-back submenu.
storage	Saves your snippets locally (and to sync storage, if enabled).
sidePanel	Shows the saved-snippets panel when you click the toolbar icon.
activeTab	Lets a right-click menu click or keyboard shortcut insert text into the page you're in.
scripting	Runs the small script that inserts the snippet at your cursor.
<all_urls> (optional)	Only requested if you turn on Typed shortcuts in Settings — needed so the trigger-expansion script can run on the page you're typing on. Off by default.

No permission is requested at install time beyond the first five, and none of them involve reading your browsing history, other tabs, or anything beyond the tab you're actively interacting with. activeTab + scripting only activate for the specific tab you right-clicked in or pressed a shortcut in, and only at that moment — never in the background. There are no network requests and no analytics anywhere in this codebase.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.