xclip Man Page

xclip Man Page - Linux

Copy to clipboard (X11).

Syntax
     xclip [OPTION] [FILE]...

Read from standard in, or from one or more files, and make the data available as an X selection for pasting into X applications.
Print the current X selection to standard out.

Options

-i, -in
Read text into X selection from standard input or files (default).

-o, -out
Print the selection to standard out (generally for piping to a file or program).

-d, -display
X display to use (e.g. "localhost:0"), xclip defaults to the value in $DISPLAY if this option is
omitted.

-f, -filter
When xclip is invoked in the in mode with output level set to silent (the defaults), the filter
option will cause xclip to print the text piped to standard in back to standard out unmodified.

-l, -loops
Number of X selection requests (pastes into X applications) to wait for before exiting, with a
value of 0 (default) causing xclip to wait for an unlimited number of requests until another
application (possibly another invocation of xclip) takes ownership of the selection.

-quiet Show informational messages on the terminal and run in the foreground.

-r, -rmlastnl
When the last character of the selection is a newline character, remove it. Newline characters
that are not the last character in the selection are not affected. If the selection does not end
with a newline character, this option has no effect. This option is useful for copying one-line
output of programs like pwd to the clipboard to paste it again into the command prompt without
executing the line immediately due to the newline character pwd appends.

-t, -target
Specify a particular data format using the given target atom. With -o the special target atom
name "TARGETS" can be used to get a list of valid target atoms for this selection. For more
information about target atoms refer to ICCCM section 2.6.2

-selection
Specify which X selection to use, options are "primary" to use XA_PRIMARY (default), "secondary"
for XA_SECONDARY or "clipboard" for XA_CLIPBOARD.

-silent
Fork into the background to wait for requests, no informational output, errors only (default).

-h, -help
Show quick summary of options.

-verbose
Provide a running commentary of what xclip is doing.

-version
Show version.

-noutf8
operate in legacy (i.e. non UTF-8) mode for backwards compatibility (Use this option only when
really necessary, as the old behavior was broken).

xclip reads text from standard in or files and makes it available to other X applications for pasting as an X selection (traditionally with the middle mouse button). It reads from all files specified, or from standard in if no files are specified.

xclip can also print the contents of a selection to standard out with the -o option.

xclip was designed to allow tighter integration of X applications and command line programs. The default action is to silently wait in the background for X selection requests (pastes) until another X application places data in the clipboard, at which point xclip exits silently.

You can use the -verbose option to see if and when xclip actually receives selection requests from other X applications. Options can be abbreviated as long as they remain unambiguous. For example, it is possible to use -d or -disp instead of -display. However, -v couldn't be used because it is ambiguous (it could be short for -verbose or -version), so it would be interpreted as a filename.

Note that only the first character of the selection specified with the -selection option is important. This means that "p", "sec" and "clip" would have the same effect as using "primary", "secondary" or "clipboard" respectively.

Install for X11

# Install using your package manager:
apt-get install xclip
or
pacman -S xclip
or
dnf install xclip

# Then for Bash, add aliases to the startup file:
echo 'alias setclip="xclip -selection c"' >> ~/.bash_aliases
echo 'alias getclip="xclip -selection c -o"' >> ~/.bash_aliases

Environment

   DISPLAY    The X display to use if nothing is specified with the -display option.

Examples

Put your uptime in the X selection. Then middle click in an X application to paste:

$ uptime | xclip

Exit after /etc/motd (message of the day) has been pasted 10 times. Show how many selection requests (pastes) have been processed:

$ xclip -loops 10 -verbose /etc/motd

Put the contents of the selection into a file:

$ xclip -o > helloworld.c

Middle click in an X application supporting HTML to paste the contents of the given file as HTML:

$ xclip -t text/html index.html

“Well they're not gonna feel any better about their life if you get clipped” ~ Tony Soprano

Related Linux commands

csplit - Split a file into context-determined pieces.
paste - Merge lines of files.
tail - Output the last part of files.
wl-copy - Copy to clipboard (Wayland).
wl-paste - Paste from clipboard (Wayland).
Equivalent Windows command: CLIP - Copy to clipboard.