1WL-CLIPBOARD(1) General Commands Manual WL-CLIPBOARD(1)
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6 wl-clipboard - Wayland copy and paste command line utilities
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9 wl-copy [--primary] [--trim-newline] [--paste-once] [--foreground]
10 [--clear] [--type mime/type] [--seat seat-name] [text...]
11 wl-paste [--primary] [--no-newline] [--list-types] [--type mime/type]
13 [--seat seat-name] [--watch command...]
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16 wl-copy copies the given text to the Wayland clipboard. If no text is
17 given, wl-copy copies data from its standard input.
18 wl-paste pastes data from the Wayland clipboard to its standard output.
20 Although wl-copy and wl-paste are particularly optimized for plain text
22 and other textual content formats, they fully support content of arbi‐
23 trary MIME types. wl-copy automatically infers the type of the copied
24 content by running xdg-mime(1) on it. wl-paste tries its best to pick a
25 type to paste based on the list of offered MIME types and the extension
26 of the file it's pasting into. If you're not satisfied with the type
27 they pick or don't want to rely on this implicit type inference, you
28 can explicitly specify the type to use with the --type option.
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31 -p, --primary
32 Use the "primary" clipboard instead of the regular clipboard.
33 -o, --paste-once
35 Only serve one paste request and then exit. Unless a clipboard
36 manager specifically designed to prevent this is in use, this
37 has the effect of clearing the clipboard after the first paste,
38 which is useful for copying sensitive data such as passwords.
39 Note that this may break pasting into some clients, in particu‐
40 lar pasting into XWayland windows is known to break when this
41 option is used.
42 -f, --foreground
44 By default, wl-copy forks and serves data requests in the back‐
45 ground; this option overrides that behavior, causing wl-copy to
46 run in the foreground.
47 -c, --clear
49 Instead of copying anything, clear the clipboard so that nothing
50 is copied.
51 -n, --trim-newline
53 Do not copy the trailing newline character if it is present in
54 the input file.
55 -n, --no-newline
57 Do not append a newline character after the pasted clipboard
58 content. This option is automatically enabled for non-text con‐
59 tent types and when using the --watch mode.
60 -t mime/type, --type mime/type
62 Override the automatically selected MIME type. For wl-copy this
63 option controls which type wl-copy will offer the content as.
64 For wl-paste it controls which of the offered types wl-paste
65 will request the content in. In addition to specific MIME types
66 such as image/png, wl-paste also accepts generic type names such
67 as text and image which make it automatically pick some offered
68 MIME type that matches the given generic name.
69 -s seat-name, --seat seat-name
71 Specify which seat wl-copy and wl-paste should work with. Way‐
72 land natively supports multi-seat configurations where each seat
73 gets its own mouse pointer, keyboard focus, and among other
74 things its own separate clipboard. The name of the default seat
75 is likely default or seat0, and additional seat names normally
76 come from the udev(7) property ENV{WL_SEAT}. You can view the
77 list of the currently available seats as advertised by the com‐
78 positor using the weston-info(1) tool. If you don't specify the
79 seat name explicitly, wl-copy and wl-paste will pick a seat
80 arbitrarily. If you are using a single-seat system, there is
81 little reason to use this option.
82 -l, --list-types
84 Instead of pasting the selection, output the list of MIME types
85 it is offered in.
86 -w command..., --watch command...
88 Instead of pasting once and exiting, continuously watch the
89 clipboard for changes, and run the specified command each time a
90 new selection appears. The spawned process can read the clip‐
91 board contents from its standard input. This mode requires a
92 compositor that supports the wlroots data-control protocol.
93 -v, --version
95 Display the version of wl-clipboard and some short info about
96 its license.
97 -h, --help
99 Display a short help message listing the available options.
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102 WAYLAND_DISPLAY
103 Specifies what Wayland server wl-copy and wl-paste should con‐
104 nect to. This is the same environment variable that you pass to
105 other Wayland clients, such as graphical applications, that con‐
106 nect to this Wayland server. It is normally set up automatically
107 by the graphical session and the Wayland compositor. See wl_dis‐
108 play_connect(3) for more details.
109 WAYLAND_DEBUG
111 When set to 1, causes the wayland-client(7) library to log every
112 interaction wl-copy and wl-paste make with the Wayland composi‐
113 tor to stderr.
114
116 $ wl-copy Hello world!
117 $ ls ~/Downloads | wl-copy
119 $ wl-copy < ~/Pictures/photo.png
121 $ wl-copy "!!"
123 $ wl-paste -n > clipboard.txt
125 $ wl-paste --list-types | wl-copy
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129 Written by Sergey Bugaev.
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132 Report wl-clipboard bugs to <https://github.com/bugaevc/wl-clip‐
133 board/issues>
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136 Copyright © 2019 Sergey Bugaev. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or
137 later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
138 This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
139 There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
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142 xclip(1), xsel(1), wl-clipboard-x11(1)
143wl-clipboard 2019-09-16 WL-CLIPBOARD(1)