Why we built ClipDeck in native Swift instead of Electron

When we set out to build ClipDeck, we had a single goal: build the fastest, most reliable clipboard manager for macOS. In today's ecosystem, the easiest path is usually to wrap a web app in Electron or use a cross-platform framework like React Native or Tauri.

But easy rarely means best. We knew that a clipboard manager needs to run constantly in the background, intercepting thousands of copy events without draining the battery or hogging memory.

The Memory Problem

An empty Electron app consumes around 150MB of RAM just sitting idle. When you're building a utility app that users expect to be completely invisible until summoned, that's unacceptable. By writing ClipDeck natively in Swift and SwiftUI, our idle memory footprint hovers around 15MB.

Native Apple Silicon

ClipDeck is compiled natively for Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4). This means zero translation layers, zero Rosetta overhead, and virtually zero impact on your MacBook's battery life. It behaves exactly like a first-party Apple utility.

Deep System Integration

We use low-level macOS APIs like LSUIElement to create a true background app, and the Accessibility API for our Click-to-Paste automation. These are things that web wrappers either struggle with or outright cannot do.

The result is an app that feels like it belongs on your Mac. It's fast, light, and entirely native.