How can I copy the output of a command directly into my clipboard?

How can I pipe the output of a command into my clipboard and paste it back when using a terminal? For instance:

cat file | clipboard

Solution 1:

I always wanted to do this and found a nice and easy way of doing it. I wrote down the complete procedure just in case anyone else needs it.

First install a 16 kB program called xclip:

sudo apt-get install xclip

You can then pipe the output into xclip to be copied into the clipboard:

cat file | xclip

To paste the text you just copied, you shall use:

xclip -o

To simplify life, you can set up an alias in your .bashrc file as I did:

alias "c=xclip"
alias "v=xclip -o"

To see how useful this is, imagine I want to open my current path in a new terminal window (there may be other ways of doing it like Ctrl+T on some systems, but this is just for illustration purposes):

Terminal 1:
pwd | c

Terminal 2:
cd `v`

Notice the ` ` around v. This executes v as a command first and then substitutes it in-place for cd to use.

Only copy the content to the X clipboard

cat file | xclip

If you want to paste somewhere else other than a X application, try this one:

cat file | xclip -selection clipboard

Solution 2:

On OS X, use pbcopy; pbpaste goes in the opposite direction.

pbcopy < .ssh/id_rsa.pub

Solution 3:

I've created a tool for Linux/OSX/Cygwin that is similar to some of these others but slightly unique. I call it cb and it can be found in this github gist.

In that gist I demonstrate how to do copy and paste via commandline using Linux, macOS, and Cygwin.

Linux

_copy(){
    cat | xclip -selection clipboard
}

_paste(){
    xclip -selection clipboard -o
}

macOS

_copy(){
    cat | pbcopy
}

_paste(){
    pbpaste
}

Cygwin

_copy(){
    cat > /dev/clipboard
}

_paste(){
    cat /dev/clipboard
}

Note: I originally just intended to mention this in my comment to Bob Enohp's answer. But then I realized that I should add a README to my gist. Since the gist editor doesn't offer a Markdown preview I used the answer box here and after copy/pasting it to my gist thought, "I might as well submit the answer."

cb

A leak-proof tee to the clipboard

This script is modeled after tee (see man tee).

It's like your normal copy and paste commands, but unified and able to sense when you want it to be chainable

Examples

Copy

$ date | cb
# clipboard contains: Tue Jan 24 23:00:00 EST 2017

Paste

# clipboard retained from the previous block
$ cb
Tue Jan 24 23:00:00 EST 2017
$ cb | cat
Tue Jan 24 23:00:00 EST 2017
$ cb > foo
$ cat foo
Tue Jan 24 23:00:00 EST 2017

Chaining

$ date | cb | tee updates.log
Tue Jan 24 23:11:11 EST 2017
$ cat updates.log
Tue Jan 24 23:11:11 EST 2017
# clipboard contains: Tue Jan 24 23:11:11 EST 2017

Copy via file redirect

(chronologically it made sense to demo this at the end)

# clipboard retained from the previous block
$ cb < foo
$ cb
Tue Jan 24 23:00:00 EST 2017
# note the minutes and seconds changed from 11 back to 00

Solution 4:

I wrote this little script that takes the guess work out of the copy/paste commands.

The Linux version of the script relies on xclip being already installed in your system. The script is called clipboard.

#!/bin/bash
# Linux version
# Use this script to pipe in/out of the clipboard
#
# Usage: someapp | clipboard     # Pipe someapp's output into clipboard
#        clipboard | someapp     # Pipe clipboard's content into someapp
#

if command -v xclip 1>/dev/null; then
    if [[ -p /dev/stdin ]] ; then
        # stdin is a pipe
        # stdin -> clipboard
        xclip -i -selection clipboard
    else
        # stdin is not a pipe
        # clipboard -> stdout
        xclip -o -selection clipboard
    fi
else
    echo "Remember to install xclip"
fi

The OS X version of the script relies on pbcopy and pbpaste which are preinstalled on all Macs.

#!/bin/bash
# OS X version
# Use this script to pipe in/out of the clipboard
#
# Usage: someapp | clipboard     # Pipe someapp's output into clipboard
#        clipboard | someapp     # Pipe clipboard's content into someapp
#

if [[ -p /dev/stdin ]] ; then
    # stdin is a pipe
    # stdin -> clipboard
    pbcopy
else
    # stdin is not a pipe
    # clipboard -> stdout
    pbpaste
fi

Using the script is very simple since you simply pipe in or out of clipboard as shown in these two examples.

$ cat file | clipboard

$ clipboard | less

Solution 5:

Add this to to your ~/.bashrc:

# Now `cclip' copies and `clipp' pastes'
alias cclip='xclip -selection clipboard'
alias clipp='xclip -selection clipboard -o'

Now clipp pastes and cclip copies — but you can also do fancier stuff:

clipp | sed 's/^/    /' | cclip

↑ indents your clipboard; good for sites without stack overflow's { } button

You can add it by running this:

printf "\nalias clipp=\'xclip -selection c -o\'\n" >> ~/.bashrc
printf "\nalias cclip=\'xclip -selection c -i\'\n" >> ~/.bashrc