Make terminal selection automatically copy to the system clipboard buffer

clipboardx11

Is there a way to have terminal applications (gnome-terminal, terminator, etc) automatically move selected text to the CLIPBOARD system buffer, and not just the PRIMARY (i.e. terminal-local) buffer?

I found this which describes the primitives, but not to the extent that I could make the behavior change: primary / clipboard intro…

I've got a specific hosted VM use case where I'm very frequently copying text from a bash or vim session in the linux guest back to the windows host… and after 20 years of linux I'm so used to the buffer "just being there" that I'm trying to replicate that behavior…

Best Answer

The primary is not local to the terminal, you can paste it in other X applications by using the middle mouse button.

What you should install is autocutsel:

Autocutsel tracks changes in the server's cutbuffer and CLIPBOARD selection. When the CLIPBOARD is changed, it updates the cutbuffer. When the cutbuffer is changed, it owns the CLIPBOARD selection.

On my Ubuntu 12.04 system I can just install this with apt-get install autocutsel, your distro might have it as well.

Related Solutions

Copy (to X clipboard) shortcut in .tmux.conf

This reply doesn't answer directly your question about creating a shortcut. But here's what I do.

You can temporarily suspend passing your keys/mouse events to tmux by holding shift. So you can press and hold Shift and user regular shortcuts of terminal/X to do the copy. In my case using Terminator, I press shift, highlight with mouse whatever I want, copy with Ctrl+Shift+C

And in case you have split panes, you can zoom the current pane with zoom-toggle-key Prefix + z, and perform the copy operation. (tested on tmux v1.8)

Copy / paste text selections between tmux and the clipboard

Use the following tmux.conf with copy-pipe in the new versions of tmux (1.8+):

set -g mouse on
# To copy:
bind-key -n -t emacs-copy M-w copy-pipe "xclip -i -sel p -f | xclip -i -sel c "

# To paste:
bind-key -n C-y run "xclip -o | tmux load-buffer - ; tmux paste-buffer"

prefix+[ into copy-mode
select content with mouse(hold)
M-w to copy that part into system clipboard
C-y the paste it inside tmux, C-v to paste it inside other regular application like web browser.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Copy (to X clipboard) shortcut in .tmux.conf

Copy / paste text selections between tmux and the clipboard

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