copy

Pipe anything into your system clipboard, from the terminal.

copy reads standard input and writes it to the system clipboard, automatically detecting whether to use an X11, Wayland, WSL, or macOS clipboard backend. It has no runtime dependencies of its own; it simply calls whichever backend is already installed on your system.

echo hello | copy
cat notes.txt | copy
tail -f app.log | copy -n 20

Table of contents

• Quick install
• Supported platforms
• Features
• Installation
• Usage
• Manual page
• How it works
• Limitations
• Contributing
• License

Quick install

This single command downloads and runs the install script, which detects your OS and architecture, fetches the latest release, and installs the copy binary to /usr/local/bin.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MaxEdgar/copy/main/install.sh | bash

The script is safe to run more than once. Running it again simply updates an existing installation to the latest release. For every other platform, or if you would rather see exactly what each step does, use the full instructions under Installation.

Supported platforms

Platform	Backend used	Notes
Linux, X11 session	xclip or xsel	GNOME on Xorg, KDE, XFCE, i3, most traditional desktops
Linux, Wayland session	wl-copy	GNOME on Wayland, Sway, Hyprland, most modern desktops
WSL	clip.exe	Requires clip.exe reachable on PATH, which is the default
macOS	pbcopy	Build from source; no packaged release for macOS yet

Any Linux distribution is supported as long as one of the backend tools above is installed. This includes Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, openSUSE, and Alpine, on both amd64 and arm64 architectures. Non amd64 architectures currently require a source build.

Not supported: Android or Termux, and any headless environment with no display server or session to hold a clipboard.

Features

• Automatic backend detection across X11, Wayland, WSL, and macOS
• -n, --lines N copies only the last N lines of input, matching the behavior of tail -n
• -c, --chars N copies only the last N characters of input
• -p, --print also prints the copied text to standard output, to verify what was copied
• -k, --keep-newline keeps a trailing newline if present, which is stripped by default
• No fixed size cap. Input is read into a dynamically growing buffer with a 512 MB safety ceiling, so nothing is ever silently truncated
• Clear, actionable error messages when no clipboard backend is found
• Small C codebase with zero external library dependencies

Installation

Prebuilt binary, on Linux (amd64 or arm64) or macOS (arm64)

Download the binary for your platform from the releases page, then run:

chmod +x copy-linux-amd64
sudo mv copy-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/copy

Substitute copy-linux-arm64 or copy-macos-arm64 for the binary name if you are on a different platform. Each binary is also available as a .tar.gz archive, and a SHA256SUMS file is provided alongside the assets to verify your download.

This installs the copy binary to /usr/local/bin/copy. You will still need a clipboard backend installed, as described below.

Build from source, on any distribution with a C compiler

copy is a single C file with no dependencies. This works identically on Arch, Fedora, openSUSE, Alpine, or any other Linux distribution.

git clone https://github.com/MaxEdgar/copy.git
cd copy
make
sudo make install

By default this installs to /usr/local/bin/copy and /usr/local/share/man/man1/copy.1. To install elsewhere:

sudo make install PREFIX=/usr

To remove:

sudo make uninstall

Clipboard backend

copy calls an existing clipboard tool; it does not implement clipboard access itself. Install one of the following depending on your session type.

Session	Package	Install command
X11	xclip	sudo apt install xclip or sudo pacman -S xclip
Wayland	wl-clipboard	sudo apt install wl-clipboard or sudo pacman -S wl-clipboard

If no backend is found, copy prints the exact command to run for your session.

Usage

Usage: copy [OPTIONS]

Pipe stdin to the system clipboard. Auto-detects X11, Wayland, WSL,
and macOS clipboard backends.

Options:
  -n, --lines N       Only copy the last N lines of input (like tail -n)
  -c, --chars N       Only copy the last N characters of input
  -p, --print         Also print the copied text to stdout
  -k, --keep-newline  Keep a trailing newline if present (default: stripped)
  -h, --help          Show this help message and exit
  -v, --version       Show version information and exit

Examples

Copy a short string.

echo hello | copy

Copy the contents of a file.

cat notes.txt | copy

Copy only the last twenty lines of a live log.

tail -f app.log | copy -n 20

Copy the last five hundred characters of kernel messages, and print what was copied.

dmesg | copy -c 500 -p

Manual page

Once installed, full documentation is available through the standard manual page system.

man copy

How it works

On startup, copy checks environment variables, XDG_SESSION_TYPE, WAYLAND_DISPLAY, and DISPLAY, along with /proc/version, to determine the current session type, then looks for the corresponding clipboard tool on PATH. If detection is inconclusive, for example when run from cron, su, or a script where environment variables are not inherited, it falls back to trying every supported backend that is installed, in a sensible order.

Input is read into a buffer that starts small and grows as needed, so there is no meaningful size limit for ordinary use. If -n or -c is given, the input is trimmed to the requested number of lines or characters before being sent to the clipboard tool. A single trailing newline is stripped by default, matching common expectations when pasting into a text field. Use -k to preserve it.

Limitations

• Requires an active display or session with a clipboard to copy into. It cannot copy into a clipboard on a headless server with no display attached, because no such clipboard exists there.
• Maximum input size is 512 MB.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at github.com/MaxEdgar/copy.

License

Released under the MIT license. See LICENSE for the full text.

Built by MaxEdgar