How to make vim paste from and copy to system s clipboard

Question

Unlike other editors  vim stores copied text in its own clipboard  So  it s very hard for me to copy some text from a webpage and paste it into the current working file  It so happens I have to either open gedit or type it manually   Can I make vim paste from and to the system s clipboard

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The simplest solution to this  that also works between different Linux machines through ssh is    Check whether vim supports X-11 clipboard  vim --version   grep clipboard  If it reports back -clipboard and -xterm clipboard you should install either vim-gtk or vim-gnome  gvim on arch linux  Add the following lines to your  vimrc     set clipboard unnamedplus set paste     If you login on a different machine via ssh  use the option -Y  ssh -Y machine   Now copying and pasting should work exactly as expected on a single  and across different machines by only using y for yank and p for paste  NB modify  vimrc on all machines where you want to use this feature

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This works for me  Ctrl Shift V

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There are two simple ways to do this  Make your file in insert mode and 1  press the middle button  the scroll wheel  in your mouse  or 2  Ctrl   Shift   V

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This would be the lines you need in your vimrc for this purpose   set clipboard  unnamed    use the clipboards of vim and win set paste                 Paste from a windows or from vim set go  a                 Visual selection automatically copied to the clipboard

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If you are on windows and you want to paste contents of system clipboard using p then type this command    set clipboard   unnamed   This solved my problem

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A quick note for people whose vim installation does not support the   and   registers  It is not necessary to download a new vim installation to paste from the clipboard  Here is an alternative method   1  Install parcellite  a clipboard manager with a low memory footprint    2  In your  vimrc file  add the following   command Clip r  parcellite -c   3  Restart vim   Now when you type in  Clip as an ex command  the contents of the clipboard will be pasted in at the cursor  You can also map the new command to a function key so as to be able to do this with one keystroke

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Didn t have  clipboard so I came up with this alternative solution using xsel   Add to your    vimrc   vnoremap  lt C-C gt   w  xsel -b lt CR gt  lt CR gt

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On top of the setting  set clipboard unnamed  you should use mvim -v which you can get with brew install macvim if you re using vim on Terminal app on Mac OS X 10 9  Default vim does not support clipboard option

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clipboard  There is a special register for storing this selection  it is the    register   Nothing is put in here unless the information about what text is selected is about to change  e g  with a left mouse click somewhere   or when another application wants to paste the selected text   Then the text is put in the    register   For example  to cut a line and make it the current selection put it on the CLIPBOARD         dd   Similarly  when you want to paste a selection from another application  e g   by clicking the middle mouse button  the selection is put in the    register first  and then  put  like any other register   For example  to put the selection  contents of the CLIPBOARD          p   registers E354   gt  There are nine types of registers                         gt  1  The unnamed register     gt  2  10 numbered registers  0 to  9  gt  3  The small delete register  -  gt  4  26 named registers  a to  z or  A to  Z  gt  5  four read-only registers            and     gt  6  the expression register     gt  7  The selection and drop registers        and      gt  8  The black hole register     gt  9  Last search pattern register      Paste from clipboard  1  Clipboard  Copy 2  Vim insertmode  middle mouse key   Check for X11-clipboard support in terminal  When you like to run Vim in a terminal you need to look for a version of Vim that was compiled with clipboard support  Check for X11-clipboard support  from the console  type     vim --version   If you see   xterm clipboard   you are good to go   http   vim wikia com wiki Accessing the system clipboard     The X server maintains three selections  called       PRIMARY  SECONDARY and CLIPBOARD      The PRIMARY selection is conventionally used to implement copying and   pasting via the middle mouse button  The SECONDARY and CLIPBOARD   selections are less frequently used by application programs    http   linux die net man 1 xsel

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If you are using a mouse first do     set paste    Then right click mouse and the contents in buffer will be pasted

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For some international keyboards  you may need to press   Space to get a     So in those case you would have to press  Space y or  Space y to copy   And  Space p or   Space p to paste

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It may also be worth mentioning  on OSX using Vim  you can select text with the mouse  Cmd-C to copy to OSX system clipboard  and the copied text will be available in the clipboard outside of Vim    In other words  OSX treats it like it were a regular window  and this is where the much-maligned Apple  Command  button comes in handy   B-30

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For my that configuration works for copying and pasting    copy and paste vmap  lt C-c gt    yi vmap  lt C-x gt    c vmap  lt C-v gt  c lt ESC gt   p imap  lt C-v gt   lt ESC gt   pa

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I tried the suggestions above and none of them worked in my environment   Windows PuTTY clone over ssh   Some additional googling turned up  https   unix stackexchange com questions 110684 copy-paste-into-sshd-vim-from-local-windows-clipboard  One of the comments suggested using SHIFT INSERT which did the trick for pasting from my desktop s clipboard into Vim s buffer  Ctrl-C was already working to copy to the desktop s clipboard from Vim

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Copy To OS Clipboard  Select text in visual mode  press   y  Paste From OS Clipboard  Press   p

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When I use my Debian vim that is not integrated with Gnome  vim --version   grep clip   shows no clipboard support   I can copy to the clipboard after holding the Shift key and selecting the text with the mouse  just like with any other curses program   As I figured from a comment by  Conner  it s the terminal  gnome-terminal in my case  that turns off its mouse event reporting when it senses my Shift press   I guess curses-based programs can receive mouse events after sending a certain Escape sequence to the terminal

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I believe that this question deserves a more objective and graphical answer   Entering Paste Mode   ESC  set paste press i SHIFT   Insert  with a text copied on your clipboard     Leaving Paste Mode   ESC  set nopaste press i   You pasted the text and you re able to type again

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The  quot   and  quot   registers are for the system s clipboard   help registers   Depending on your system  they may do different things  For instance  on systems that don t use X11 like OSX or Windows  the  quot   register is used to read and write to the system clipboard  On X11 systems both registers can be used  See  help x11-selection for more details  but basically the  quot   is analogous to X11 s  PRIMARY  selection  which usually copies things you select with the mouse and pastes with the middle mouse button  and  quot   is analogous to X11 s  CLIPBOARD  selection  which is the clipboard proper   If all that went over your head  try using  quot  yy or  quot  yy to copy a line to your system s clipboard  Assuming you have the appropriate compile options  one or the other should work   You might like to remap this to something more convenient for you  For example  you could put vnoremap  lt C-c gt   quot  y in your    vimrc so that you can visually select and press Ctrl c to yank to your system s clipboard   Be aware that copying pasting from the system clipboard will not work if  echo has  clipboard   returns 0  In this case  vim is not compiled with the  clipboard feature and you ll have to install a different version or recompile it  Some linux distros supply a minimal vim installation by default  but if you install the vim-gtk or vim-gtk3 package you can get the extra features nonetheless  You also may want to have a look at the  clipboard  option described in  help cb  In this case you can  set clipboard unnamed or  set clipboard unnamedplus to make all yanking deleting operations automatically copy to the system clipboard  This could be an inconvenience in some cases where you are storing something else in the clipboard as it will override it  To paste you can use  quot  p or  quot  p  again  depending on your system and or desired selection  or you can map these to something else  I type them explicitly  but I often find myself in insert mode  If you re in insert mode you can still paste them with proper indentation by using  lt C-r gt  lt C-p gt   or  lt C-r gt  lt C-p gt    See  help i CTRL-R CTRL-P  It s also worth mentioning vim s paste option   help paste   This puts vim into a special  quot paste mode quot  that disables several other options  allowing you to easily paste into vim using your terminal emulator s or multiplexer s familiar paste shortcut   Simply type  set paste to enable it  paste your content and then type  set nopaste to disable it   Alternatively  you can use the pastetoggle option to set a keycode that toggles the mode   help pastetoggle    I recommend using registers instead of these options  but if they are still too scary  this can be a convenient workaround while you re perfecting your vim chops   See  help clipboard for more detailed information

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I used the answer of NM Pennypacker and installed vim via homebrew for an early 2011 MacBook Pro   brew install vim   Now I can also use the    register to copy and paste text within vim  I even didn t have to change something within my    vimrc file or the  PATH  Homebrew added symlinks in  usr local bin  e g  vim -     Cellar vim 8 1 2350 bin vim   The alternative  which worked before  is to copy some lines of text within vim by marking it with the mouse and using copy and paste  cmd   c  cmd   v  on a mac  This option only works if the text you want to copy and paste is less in size than the window size of vim  If you want to copy all text within vim by marking the whole window or using cmd   a  this will copy other parts of the console  written before starting vim  which is very annoying   So  I am happy having found the new method using the clippboard register

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Linux  On my Linux system  the   and   registers map to an X11 selection  which can be pasted with the middle mouse button  When  set clipboard unnamed and  set clipboard unnamedplus are used  then the registers map to the clipboard  and can be pasted with CTRL-V   The specifics seem to be somewhat configuration and system dependent  so your mileage will definitely vary  It should definitely get you pointed in the right direction  though   See Also  http   vim wikia com wiki Accessing the system clipboard

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Since vim 8 right click enables visual mode by default  This prevents the  normal  copy  amp  paste  call it a  defect by design  https   github com vim vim issues 1326   Fix it by doing    echo  set mouse- a   gt  gt     vimrc    Exit and restart vim

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With Vim 8  on Linux or Mac  you can now simply use the OS  native paste  ctrl shift V on Linux  cmd V on Mac   Do not press i for Insert Mode   It will paste the contents of your OS clipboard  preserving the spaces and tabs without adding autoindenting  It s equivalent to the old  set paste  i  ctrl shift V  esc   set nopaste method   You don t even need the  clipboard or  xterm clipboard vim features installed anymore  This feature is called  bracketed paste   For more details  see Turning off auto indent when pasting text into vim

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After entering the vim window  press i to enter into insert mode  Then move your cursor to the desire location and press ctrl   insert button simultaneously to paste from the clipboard

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If you are using vim in MAC OSX  unfortunately it comes with older verion  and not complied with clipboard options  Luckily  homebrew can easily solve this problem   install vim   brew install vim --with-lua --with-override-system-vim  install gui verion of vim   brew install macvim --with-lua --with-override-system-vim  restart the terminal to take effect     append the following line to    vimrc  set clipboard unnamed  now you can copy the line in vim with yy and paste it system-wide

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You can copy into vim by gnome-terminal s shortcut for paste  Make the file in insert mode and use   Ctrl Shift v    Remember beforehand to     set paste    to avoid messing with the indentation

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The other solutions are good if you want to change your vimrc  etc    However I wanted an simple way to copy from vim to my system keyboard  This is what I came up with    Select the text you want to copy with visual mode v Press    it will automatically expand to show    lt    gt   Type y   or y    depending on your system  to yank the selected text to the system clipboard

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Following on from Conner s answer  which was great  but C-R C-p    and C-R C-p   in insert mode is a bit inconvenient  Ditto   p and   p from command mode   a VIM guru suggested the following to map C-v to what C-r C-p   does      You could have    inoremap  lt C-v gt   lt C-o gt   p for insert mode only      if you really wanted to override blockwise visual mode  not recommended by him as visual   mode is good  you could have    map  lt C-v gt    p

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I ran into this issue on a mid-2017 Macbook Pro running vim within iTerm2 as my primary development environment   As other answers have suggested  I ran vim --version and noticed that it returns -clipboard  which means that the version of vim that shipped with my machine hasn t been compiled with the clipboard option   The homebrew package for vim appears to compile with the clipboard option  so the fix for me was to    Run brew install vim Add set clipboard  unnamed to my    vimrc file Close and reopen iTerm2

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If you have it  try removing this from your vimrc  set mouse a It messes with the paste functionality

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Based on  lis2 answer  I use a simpler configuration that will not force Insert mode at the end     Copy and paste if has  clipboard    amp  amp   has  gui running     vnoremap  lt C-c gt    y   vnoremap  lt C-x gt    d   vnoremap  lt C-v gt    p   inoremap  lt C-v gt   lt C-r gt  lt C-o gt   endif   Mind that all these override default Vim mappings    v CTRL-C  stop Visual mode v CTRL-X  subtract  count  from number v CTRL-V  blockwise Visual mode i CTRL-V  insert next non-digit literally  which is also mapped to i CTRL-Q   As an alternative  one can use keys inspired in the  yank    delete  and  put  Vim verbs   lt C-y gt    lt C-d gt  and  lt C-p gt  respectively  These would only override one default mapping    i CTRL-P  backwards search keyword for completion

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What you really need is EasyClip  It will do just that and so much more

[vim] How to make vim paste from (and copy to) system's clipboard?

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