From PurePaste to ActionSense — A Major Upgrade to My macOS Clipboard Tool

Two weeks ago I shipped the first public version of PurePaste, a macOS menu bar clipboard assistant. Today I'm releasing a major upgrade under a new name: ActionSense.

Why the rename

A few days after launch, someone pointed out that sindresorhus/pure-paste already exists — a command-line tool by Sindre Sorhus that's been around for years. I should have checked before naming. Lesson learned.

The new name, ActionSense, better captures what the app actually does: it makes sense of clipboard content and maps it to actions. PasteFlow is the detection engine, but the product is about turning copied data into something actionable.

What changed under the hood

I didn't just rename the project. I tore down and rebuilt significant parts of the architecture.

Detector protocol system

The original 825-line ContentDetector.swift was a single enum with 13 detection functions, a math tokenizer, and a priority chain all crammed together. Adding a new type meant touching at least four different switch statements across three files.

The new architecture defines a ContentDetecting protocol, with each detector as an independent class:

swift
protocol ContentDetecting {
    var identifier: String { get }
    var priority: Int { get }
    func detect(_ text: String, htmlData: Data?) -> DetectedContent?
}

A DetectorRegistry manages the priority chain. Adding a new type now means writing one class and registering it at startup. The core detection logic is distributed across five focused files instead of one god object.

Dependency injection

The ViewModel no longer reaches out to seven singletons directly. Dependencies are injected through the initializer with sensible defaults:

swift
init(monitor: ClipboardMonitor? = nil,
     registry: DetectorRegistry? = nil,
     panel: FloatingPanelController? = nil,
     history: HistoryStore? = nil)

Not revolutionary, but it means I can actually test the coordinator logic without spinning up a real pasteboard and window system.

ClipboardMonitor extraction

The NSPasteboard polling loop was tangled inside the ViewModel alongside mode switching, history recording, and Pro purchase logic. It's now a standalone ClipboardMonitor class — one timer, one callback, one responsibility. The dual-guard dead-loop prevention (internalWriteFlag + lastChangeCount) lives there, not scattered across 200 lines of unrelated code.

Fewer detector types, higher precision

The initial release tried to cover everything: IP addresses, Chinese tracking numbers, address keywords. Several of these turned out to be either low-utility (IP Ping in an era where Terminal.app exists) or overly region-specific (Chinese address patterns that trigger false positives on any text containing 市 or 路).

The current set is nine types: URL, Email, Phone, Date/Time, Color, Math, Coordinates, JSON, and Rich HTML. Each one justifies its existence with a clear, frequent use case.

No more IAP

The v1 code had a StoreKit 2 integration, daily usage limits, and a Pro upgrade path. I removed all of it. The project is MIT-licensed. Charging money for an open-source clipboard tool when you have zero users and zero distribution felt like optimizing for a future that may never arrive. If someone wants to pay for this someday, they'll tell me.

Five languages

The original bilingual toggle grew into full five-language support: English, Chinese, Japanese, French, and German. The implementation uses a straightforward loc() function with hardcoded fallbacks rather than .strings files, because the app's String Catalog wasn't loading reliably from the bundle in development builds. Not elegant, but it works every time.

What stayed the same

• Fully local. No backend, no telemetry, no network calls. The clipboard never leaves the machine.
• Plain Text Mode. Still the one feature I use the most.
• Intent History. Still the feature I'm proudest of designing.
• Zero dependencies. SwiftUI + AppKit. No CocoaPods, no SPM packages.
• The floating panel. NSWindow.borderless + .nonactivatingPanel, positioned at NSEvent.mouseLocation. Dismisses on app switch or after five seconds — no global mouse hooks, App Store sandbox compliant.

Get it

bash
git clone https://github.com/xiaoyunchengzhu/ActionSense.git
cd ActionSense
open ActionSense.xcodeproj
# Cmd+R

Or download the DMG from xiaoniubuniu.com/products/action-sense.

macOS 14.0+. Xcode 15.0+. MIT license.

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