Pipe to/from the clipboard in a Bash script

Is it possible to pipe to/from the clipboard in Bash?

Whether it is piping to/from a device handle or using an auxiliary application, I can't find anything.

For example, if /dev/clip was a device linking to the clipboard we could do:

cat /dev/clip        # Dump the contents of the clipboard
cat foo > /dev/clip  # Dump the contents of "foo" into the clipboard

There are a wealth of clipboards you could be dealing with. I expect you're probably a Linux user who wants to put stuff in the X Windows primary clipboard. Usually, the clipboard you want to talk to has a utility that lets you talk to it.

In the case of X, there's xclip (and others). xclip -selection c will send data to the clipboard that works with Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V in most applications.

If you're on Mac OS X, there's pbcopy. E.g., cat example.txt | pbcopy

If you're in Linux terminal mode (no X) then look into gpm or Screen which has a clipboard. Try the Screen command readreg.

Under Windows 10+ or Cygwin, use /dev/clipboard or clip.

Make sure you are using alias xclip="xclip -selection c" or else you won't be able to paste using Ctrl+v.

Example: After running echo -n test | xclip, Ctrl+v will paste test

Install

# You can install xclip using `apt-get`
apt-get install xclip

# or `pacman`
pacman -S xclip

# or `dnf`
dnf install xclip

If you do not have access to apt-get nor pacman, nor dnf, the sources are available on sourceforge.

Set-up

Bash

In ~/.bash_aliases, add:

alias setclip="xclip -selection c"
alias getclip="xclip -selection c -o"

Do not forget to load your new configuration using . ~/.bash_aliases or by restarting your profile.

Fish

In ~/.config/fish/config.fish, add:

abbr setclip "xclip -selection c"
abbr getclip "xclip -selection c -o"

Do not forget to restart your fish instance by restarting your terminal for changes to apply.

Usage

You can now use setclip and getclip, e.g:

$ echo foo | setclip
$ getclip
foo

On macOS, use the built-in pbcopy and pbpaste commands.

For example, if you run

cat ~/.bashrc | pbcopy

the contents of the ~/.bashrc file will be available for pasting with the Cmd + V shortcut.

To save the current clipboard to a file, redirect the output pbpaste to a file:

pbpaste > my_clipboard.txt