I built Lucent because I was tired of the memory overhead of Electron-based utilities and the lack of native performance in modern productivity tools. I wanted something that felt like a natural extension of macOS—lightweight, private, and powerful.
Why AppKit? While SwiftUI is the future, I chose AppKit for Lucent to ensure a locked 60fps experience and fine-grained control over system behaviors. Every detail, from the translucent UI to the media preview, is optimized for macOS.
Beyond Text History: I often found myself needing to quickly resize an image or convert a video to a GIF for a report. Instead of reaching for a third-party app or fumbling with ffmpeg parameters, I integrated these tools directly into the clipboard.
Media Hub: One-click video compression and format conversion (powered by FFmpeg).
Developer Focused: When copying from Terminal or Xcode, Lucent renders code snippets as rich text, preserving the original syntax highlighting in the preview. It also offers instant color code copying for designers.
Privacy & Telemetry: Your clipboard content is stored 100% locally. For product improvement, Lucent collects anonymous telemetry via Mixpanel and standard crash reports to help me squash bugs. However, no clipboard data or sensitive information ever leaves your machine. I’ve made sure that analytics are focused purely on app usage and stability, not your data.
The Sandbox Challenge: Due to Mac App Store sandboxing, I had to overcome several hurdles regarding accessibility permissions. To restore seamless one-click pasting, I’ve also released a small, secure open-source helper on my website.
I’d love to hear any suggestions or feedback you have for the app. Thanks for checking it out!