📋 Copy Paste Tracker — VS Code Extension
Log every paste in VS Code with incredible precision. Discover where your code came from — specific browser URLs, internal VS Code file paths, or external apps.
Copy Paste Tracker isn't just a clipboard manager; it's a powerful attribution and analytics engine running right in your IDE.
✨ Premium Features
- 🌐 Browser URL Detection: Copies from Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge are tracked with their exact origin URL. (e.g.
Browser — stackoverflow.com)
- 🏷️ Semantic Auto-Tagging: An intelligent heuristics engine automatically tags your pasted code as
[UI], [LOGIC], [CSS], [CONFIG], or [TEST] based on its content.
- 📊 30-Day Activity Heatmap: Visualize your copying and pasting habits with a beautiful GitHub-style contribution graph directly in the side panel.
- 📝 Auto-Attribution Comments: Enable a setting to automatically insert a
// Source: URL comment directly into your code above the block you pasted. (Smart enough to use <!-- --> for HTML and /* */ for CSS!)
- 🔍 Full-Canvas Expand Mode: View your long code snippets in a stunning full-screen modal with complete syntax highlighting.
- 📂 Internal Paste Tracking: Know exactly which local file (and line number) you copied internal code from.
🛠️ How Browser URL Detection Works
When you copy text from a modern browser, the system clipboard actually stores two versions:
- Plain text (the raw code)
- HTML (the rich, styled version)
Browsers inject a hidden SourceURL header inside the rich HTML payload. This extension intercepts the paste command, parses the hidden HTML header, extracts the exact URL, and logs it to your dashboard.
⌨️ Commands
| Command |
Description |
Copy Paste Tracker: Show Paste Log |
Open the sleek dashboard panel |
Copy Paste Tracker: Clear All Logs |
Delete your entire paste history |
Copy Paste Tracker: Export Log as JSON |
Save your history to a JSON file |
Copy Paste Tracker: Toggle Tracking On/Off |
Pause or resume background tracking |
⚙️ Configuration (Settings)
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
copyPasteTracker.enabled |
true |
Turn paste tracking on or off. |
copyPasteTracker.maxLogEntries |
500 |
The maximum number of entries kept in local storage. |
copyPasteTracker.autoAddSourceComment |
false |
When enabled, inserts // Source: URL above copied code into the editor. |
copyPasteTracker.previewLength |
120 |
Characters shown in the truncated dashboard view. |
To read the hidden HTML clipboard headers, this extension uses native OS commands under the hood:
| Platform |
Native Clipboard Tool Used |
| Windows |
PowerShell (Get-Clipboard -TextFormatType Html) |
| macOS |
AppleScript (osascript) |
| Linux |
xclip (Must be installed manually via sudo apt install xclip) |
🔒 Privacy & Data
All logs are stored strictly locally inside VS Code's global extension storage (globalState).
- No data is ever sent to any external server.
- No cloud syncing is enabled by default.
You have full ownership of your paste history.
📜 License
MIT License
