clipboard

.. only:: man

Overview
--------------

Copy/paste to the system clipboard from shell scripts

.. highlight:: sh

The clipboard kitten can be used to read or write to the system clipboard from the shell. It even works over SSH. Using it is as simple as::

echo hooray | kitten clipboard

All text received on :file:STDIN is copied to the clipboard.

To get text from the clipboard::

kitten clipboard --get-clipboard

The text will be written to :file:STDOUT. Note that by default kitty asks for permission when a program attempts to read the clipboard. This can be controlled via :opt:clipboard_control.

.. versionadded:: 0.27.0 Support for copying arbitrary data types

The clipboard kitten can be used to send/receive more than just plain text from the system clipboard. You can transfer arbitrary data types. Best illustrated with some examples::

# Copy an image to the clipboard:
kitten clipboard picture.png

# Copy an image and some text to the clipboard:
kitten clipboard picture.jpg text.txt

# Copy text from STDIN and an image to the clipboard:
echo hello | kitten clipboard picture.png /dev/stdin

# Copy any raster image available on the clipboard to a PNG file:
kitten clipboard -g picture.png

# Copy an image to a file and text to STDOUT:
kitten clipboard -g picture.png /dev/stdout

# List the formats available on the system clipboard
kitten clipboard -g -m . /dev/stdout

Normally, the kitten guesses MIME types based on the file names. To control the MIME types precisely, use the :option:--mime <kitty +kitten clipboard --mime> option.

This kitten uses a new protocol developed by kitty to function, for details, see :doc:/clipboard.

.. program:: kitty +kitten clipboard

.. include:: /generated/cli-kitten-clipboard.rst