unable to paste with xclip outside of terminal

Question

I am trying to copy from the terminal with xclip and paste it into the unity desktop environment into gedit text editor. I can copy and paste with xclip in terminal:

$ cat line-size.c | xclip
xclip -o > input5.txt
cat input5.txt
#include <stdio.h>
...

However, when I press control + v to paste into gedit, it only pastes the actual last thing I copied within unity desktop, such as something from firefox browser.

How can I paste in gui applications something I copied from terminal?

score 114 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 28 '13 at 18:04

114

I think it is just a matter of understanding the different selection clipboards used by the xclip utility

   -selection
          specify  which X selection to use, options are "primary" to use
          XA_PRIMARY (default), "secondary" for  XA_SECONDARY  or  "clip‐
          board" for XA_CLIPBOARD

When you do cat line-size.c | xclip the default behaviour is to copy to the primary X selection buffer - to paste from that buffer, you need to use a mouse middle-click instead of the Ctrl+v combination.

To copy into the clipboard instead, so that you can paste with Ctrl+v, you would need to do

cat line-size.c | xclip -selection clipboard

answered Nov 28 '13 at 18:04

steeldriver

143,099

2

It is equally as easy to paste by piping to xclip without additional arguments. Instead of Ctrl+v, just use middle mouse click. – Subhamoy S. Mar 31 '14 at 12:47
That can be changed to xclip < line-size.c -selection clipboard – JamesTheAwesomeDude Jun 18 '15 at 21:23
@SubhamoySengupta see my edit – cvsguimaraes Mar 26 '16 at 05:33
6

The instruction cat line-size.c | xclip -sel clip has the same result that cat line-size.c | xclip -selection clipboard – Geison Santos Jun 06 '16 at 13:58
3

I can't imagine the default use-case for xclip was to interact with something besides the user's clipboard. – aaaaaa Jan 22 '18 at 23:27
What are the different selection(s) used for if not copy/paste? Ie. options are "primary" to use XA_PRIMARY (default), "secondary" for XA_SECONDARY or "clip‐board" for XA_CLIPBOARD – DanCat Aug 05 '23 at 21:28

score 15 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 03 '17 at 11:37

Just in case if someone is looking for a shortest version without using aliases. By using something|xclip -se c instead of just bare something|xclip you can press Ctrl+V/Ctrl+Shift+V and see a desirable result. Where something — cat somefile.txt for example.

unable to paste with xclip outside of terminal

2 Answers2