ARCHIVED

Github is forcing me to move to 2FA, and I can't be bothered to find out how it's done, nor do I wish to. As I've stopped using a clipboard manager for a while, I have decided to archive this repository rather than move to a decent host. I recommend making your own clone because I'll fully delete my account in the near future.

Clipman is a finished program: it works, and doesn't need maintenance. It is also very simple and tiny, in fact I should have used python or even just bash. It has some fundamental design flaws that might warrant exploring a redo from scratch, though the big issues still lack a satisfying solution at the wayland protocol level. Any interested party will find abundant documentation about it scattered throughout the issue tracker.

Clipman

A basic clipboard manager for Wayland, with support for persisting copy buffers after an application exits.

Bugs

When you experience a clipboard-related bug, try to see if it still happens without clipman running, as it's more likely to be caused by one of our own known issues rather than wl-clipboard.

Installing

From source

Requirements:

a windows manager that uses wlr-data-control, like Sway and other wlroots-based WMs.
wl-clipboard >= 2.0
a selector: wofi and bemenu are specially supported, but you can use what you want
notify-send (optional, for desktop notifications)

Install go, add $GOPATH/bin to your path, then run go get github.com/yory8/clipman OR run go install inside this folder.

Distros

A few distros ship with clipman binaries in their official or unofficial repos.

Usage

Run the binary in your Sway session by adding exec wl-paste -t text --watch clipman store (or exec wl-paste -t text --watch clipman store 1>> PATH/TO/LOGFILE 2>&1 & to log errors) at the beginning of your config. It is highly recommended that you run clipman with the --no-persist option, see Known Issues.

For primary clipboard support, also add exec wl-paste -p -t text --watch clipman store -P --histpath="~/.local/share/clipman-primary.json" (note that both the -p in wl-paste and the -P in clipman are mandatory in this case).

To query the history and select items, run the binary as clipman pick -t wofi. You can assign it to a keybinding: bindsym $mod+h exec clipman pick -t wofi. You can pass additional arguments to the selector like this: clipman pick --tool wofi -T'--prompt=my-prompt -i' (both --prompt and -i are flags of wofi). You can use a custom selector like this: clipman pick --print0 --tool=CUSTOM --tool-args="fzf --prompt 'pick > ' --bind 'tab:up' --cycle --read0".

To remove items from history, clipman clear -t wofi and clipman clear --all.

To serve the last history item at startup, add exec clipman restore to your Sway config.

For more options: clipman -h.

Known Issues

We only support plain text. By default, we continue serving the last copied item even after its owner has exited. This means that, unless you run with the --no-persist option, you'll always immediately lose rich content; for example:

vim's visual block mode breaks
copying images in Firefox breaks
if you copy a bookmark in Firefox, you won't be able to paste it in another bookmark folder
if you copy formatted text inside Libre Office you'll lose all formatting on paste

Run clipman store with the --no-persist option if you are affected. Unfortunately, it seems that there is no way to make them play well together.

Status

Supporting images or fixing the known issues would require a complete rewrite using wlroots directly. Clipman is considered feature complete and is now in maintanance mode.

Related software

Clipmon: a demon specialized in keeping the clipboard alive after an application quits; if that's your only reason for using a clipboard manager, it might be a better fit as it supports any filetype (not just text).

License

GPL v3.0

2019- (C) yory8 yory8@users.noreply.github.com