Support

Getting help

Most problems with Kipside come from one of four things. Try these before writing in — they cover the great majority of reports.

Screenshots say a permission is required

Press ⌥⇧S instead of using the panel's capture button. The keyboard shortcut carries a temporary permission that Chrome grants for exactly that action, and it works on any page without granting anything.

The panel button is different: Chrome refuses to screenshot a page unless the extension has access to all sites, and access to the one site you're on is not enough. If you'd rather use the button, allow Kipside on all sites in Settings → Site access.

Nothing is captured when I copy

Kipside only records what you copy on sites you have allowed — it requests no site access when you install it. Open Settings → Site access and add the site, or turn on automatic capture for all sites.

Also check the header: if it reads Paused, capture is off. And check Settings → Privacy — several password-manager domains are excluded by default, and you may have added others.

Bridge says "Reload needed"

Chrome only creates the native-messaging connection when the extension starts. Granting the permission while it's already running isn't enough, so the connection stays unavailable until you reload.

Go to chrome://extensions, find Kipside, and click the reload icon. Then open Settings → Desktop Bridge and connect again.

Bridge is connected but OS screenshots never appear

Almost always this means the Bridge helper program isn't installed on your computer yet. Granting the permission and clicking Connect in Kipside sets up the browser half — but Bridge is a small separate program that has to be built and registered on your machine, and Kipside cannot install it for you.

Check Settings → Diagnostics. If Desktop Bridge shows not connected while the permission is granted, this is why.

The quickest way needs no compiler — just Node.js, from a checkout of the Kipside repository:

There's also a Rust build in bridge/ which is smaller and adds clipboard images and source-app names, but it has to be compiled. The Node one is the one to start with.

Being straight with you: needing a terminal at all is more friction than this should have, and a signed installer is the right answer. Until then, everything inside Chrome works without Bridge — it only adds your system clipboard and screenshots taken outside the browser.

A keyboard shortcut does nothing

Chrome refuses to assign a shortcut whose key combination is already taken by another extension or by the system, and it does this silently — the shortcut is simply left blank and pressing it does nothing.

Settings → Diagnostics tells you which ones are unassigned. Click through to chrome://extensions/shortcuts, find Kipside, and set your own. ⌥⇧S for region capture is the one worth having.

Dragging into an app doesn't work

It won't work everywhere, and we won't claim it does. Web editors implement drop differently, and some accept nothing from an extension at all.

Click the clip instead. That copies it, and pasting works in every application without exception. Click-to-copy is never the slow path.

My clips disappeared

Clips expire after seven days by default. Change this in Settings → History, or pin the ones worth keeping — pinned clips never expire, whatever the retention setting.

Clearing your browser data also removes them. Kipside stores everything locally, so there is no cloud copy to restore from. Settings → Data → Export takes everything with you in one file.

Still stuck?

Email support@kipside.site. It helps enormously if you include:

Please don't paste clip contents into a support email. Kipside exists so that what you copy stays on your machine, and a bug report is not a good reason to break that.

Privacy and terms

The privacy policy explains exactly what is stored and where. The terms of use are short and worth reading, particularly the part about Kipside being a working shelf rather than a backup.

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