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I'd like to copy and paste to the clipboard from the command line.

I've found two utilities that works with "mouse" selection: xclip and xsel. But they both ignore the clipboard that is filled with Ctrlc in GUI applications. So I may not paste things that were copied in this way.

What command line utility works like xclip or xsel but is compatible with Ctrlc and Ctrlv?

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  • It looks like xclip and xsel accept an option -selection clipboard to use a non-default X selection. Did you try that? Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 6:49

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xclip uses the clipboard if you specify -selection clipboard:

xclip -selection clipboard -o

prints the contents of the clipboard (as filled with Ctrl-C in a GUI application).

The equivalent option for xsel is -b (or --clipboard).

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  • xclip works perfectly. But I'm confused. I've already tried -selection clipboard and get no result. There are conditions under which it doesn't work, but I'm failed to reproduce this conditions Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 6:53
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    The X selection/clipboard has a few weird edge cases; see jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html for an overview (and tronche.com/gui/x/icccm if you want all the details). Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 6:57
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    You can use -se c instead of the long -selection clipboard, too. Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 12:12
  • Some times xclip not works: when i copy text in firefox, then switch to linux console, and run DISPLAY=:0 xclip -selection clipboard -o, it block forever. This problem will gone after i restart firefox. Commented May 10, 2019 at 2:49

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