// desktop app [Live · open source]
Cubby & Ceiling
Native Windows desktop engineering, local-first
Native Windows desktop engineering
Cubby and Ceiling look unrelated on the surface, but both are the same kind of engineering: native-feeling Windows apps that solve one job well, keep everything on the machine, and take no shortcuts on the hard Windows plumbing. Cubby replaces Windows 11 clipboard history with searchable, encrypted, lossless history that even survives remote-desktop sessions. Ceiling keeps AI subscription capacity visible from the tray and a taskbar strip, treating each provider meter as the source of truth. Both are shipped, code-signed, and open source (Cubby GPL-3.0, Ceiling MIT).
- Rust
- Tauri v2
- React
- TypeScript
- Win32 P/Invoke
- SQLite
- Windows OCR
// architecture
Win32 clipboard / provider meters ──► Rust core ──► encrypted SQLite ──► Tauri + React shell ──► tray · flyout · taskbar strip
// how it's built
Both apps put shared logic in Rust under a Tauri + React shell, tuned for fast startup, low idle work, and system accent-aware appearance. The goal is to feel like part of Windows over a deliberately thin native surface, not a cross-platform utility layered on top.
Native clipboard integration with contention retries and burst handling, plus source-application context. Selecting a clip restores the real Windows clipboard formats and pastes into the previously focused app, with a plain-text option, instead of simulating Shift+Insert.
History and image blobs are encrypted at rest with Windows-protected keys and authenticated encryption. Because clips are ciphertext on disk, search decrypts and substring-matches in memory across your whole history, offline Windows OCR pulls text out of copied screenshots, and existing Ditto history imports in one step.
Most clipboard managers fall apart across RDP and remote-control tools. A dedicated large-text sync mode restores the synchronized clipboard so big logs are not retyped character by character, with a documented handoff when the remote app forwards clipboard hotkeys.
Ceiling reads each provider reported window (five-hour, weekly, monthly, and provider-specific) and treats the provider meter as authoritative. Every read carries a live, cached, stale, or failed state, and "not currently enforced" is a first-class state when a provider stops reporting a known limit. It never invents entitlement data.
Windows 11 does not allow old-style taskbar toolbars, so Ceiling uses a transparent, always-on-top strip that sits just above the taskbar without stealing focus, plus a compact tray flyout with each provider remaining capacity, reset time, source, and freshness.
Neither app phones home. Credentials and usage data stay on the machine, browser cookies and API keys are opt-in, and there is no telemetry or cloud dependency. Both ship as code-signed installers built from good forks (Cubby from PastePaw, Ceiling from Win-CodexBar and CodexBar) taken well past their starting point.
// highlights
Win32 clipboard capture, off-focus format restore, tray and always-on-top strip windowing, and DPI-aware placement, all on a thin native surface.
Fast local search across months of clips, all encrypted at rest with Windows-protected keys, with offline OCR on copied screenshots.
A large-clipboard sync mode keeps copy and paste working across RDP and remote-support tools where other managers break.
Ceiling never fakes a number a provider did not report; live, cached, stale, and failed are all visible states.
Nothing leaves the machine by default. No account, no cloud, no analytics in either app.
Cubby builds on PastePaw and Ceiling on Win-CodexBar, each rebuilt around search, encryption, reliability, and honest state.
// components
Win32 capture, encrypted store with in-memory search, OCR, Ditto import, target-aware paste, and the remote-session sync mode.
Per-provider meter reads with freshness states, the tray flyout, and the transparent taskbar-adjacent strip.
The Tauri v2 + Rust + React foundation both apps share for fast, accent-aware, low-idle Windows behavior.
// related work