I have been using Ubuntu for some time, but still haven't found what would be the most useful thing for me, a way of having multiple clipboards. So is there any software out there at all, or a built-in feature that would make it so that I could use different keyboard shortcuts to copy/cut/paste from and to different clipboards on my machine? So I could be able to do something like this to copy to multiple clipboards (and do very similar things to paste from them and also cut to them):

  • Clipboard 1: CTRL + C

  • Clipboard 2: CTRL + F1 + C

  • Clipboard 3: CTRL + F2 + C

  • Clipboard 4: CTRL + F3 + C

And so on...


OS Information:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 15.10
Release:    15.10
Codename:   wily
Flavour:    Gnome
GNOME Version: 3.18

Solution 1:

You could also take a look to CopyQ on GitHub, it can manage (among lot of things) multiple clipboard organized through tabs.

CopyQ Screenshot

CopyQ monitors system clipboard and saves its content in customized tabs. Saved clipboard can be later copied and pasted directly into any application.

Items can be:

  • edited with internal editor or with preferred text editor,
  • moved to other tabs,
  • drag'n'dropped to applications,
  • marked with tag or a note,
  • passed to or changed by custom commands,
  • or simply removed.

Less straightforward to install than the accepted answer, but really really powerful and customizable. I fell in love with it :)

Solution 2:

You could use gnome-shell-extensions-gpaste, available in the Universe Repository.

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-gpaste

But there is no shortcut to get a concrete entry from the history. You have to mark the entry manually if you need another one then the last.

So it's only half an answer.

An idea is, to simulate the behavior (In my case I had to change the entry Keyboard Shortcuts > Delete the active item from history from <Ctrl><Alt>V to <Ctrl><Alt>X)

  • Select your first text to copy
  • Ctrl+C
  • Select the second text to copy
  • Ctrl+C
  • Paste the latest text with Ctrl+V
  • Ctrl+Alt+X to delete the entry from the history list
  • Paste the latest text with Ctrl+V

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