macOS app · PWA · Server
PasteLAN
Copy-paste text and images between a Mac and a phone through your own server — a Swift menu bar app, a single Go binary that keeps clips in memory only, and an installable PWA.
- Role
- Developer
- Timeline
- 2026
- Context
- Personal project
- Stack
- Swift
- AppKit
- Go
- PWA
- Web Push
- ChaCha20-Poly1305
Teaser video
What it does
- Mac → phone: every ⌘C on the Mac (text, screenshots, images from the browser or Finder) appears on the phone within about a second, with a Copy button.
- Phone → Mac: paste text or pick images, tap Send, then ⌘V on the Mac. The phone and the Mac don't need to be on the same Wi-Fi.
- Clipboard manager on the Mac: history in the menu (⌘0–⌘9), search, delete with ⌥-click, send a single clip with ⌃-click, and an offline mode when autosync is off.
- No server? A local Wi-Fi mode runs a tiny server on the Mac; the phone pairs by scanning a QR code and everything is encrypted with ChaCha20-Poly1305 using the key in that code.
How it's built
- Mac app: Swift + AppKit in a single source file, token in the Keychain, signed self-updates (Ed25519). Content from password managers is never sent.
- Server: one Go binary with no dependencies, listening on localhost behind HTTPS. Clips live in memory only (20 items / 24 hours by default) and disappear on restart.
- Security: one-time pairing codes valid for 5 minutes, per-device tokens stored as hashes, login rate limits,
HttpOnly+SameSite=Strictcookies, a strict CSP and images checked by their content.