How to copy to clipboard in Vim

Question

Is it possible to copy to clipboard directly from Vim  yy only copies stuff to Vim s internal buffer  I want to copy to the OS s clipboard  Is there any such command in Vim or you can only yank stuff within Vim

User · Answer

You can find the answers here Arch Wiki

For Linux: First of all you have to enable Clipboard in your vim version by installing gvim.

Next you have to put this line on your .vimrc file.

set clipboard=unnamedplus

User · Answer

On Mac OSX   copy selected part  visually select text type v or V in normal mode  and type  w  pbcopy copy the whole file   w  pbcopy paste from the clipboard  r  pbpaste   On most Linux Distros  you can substitute    pbcopy above with xclip -i -sel c or xsel -i -b pbpaste using xclip -o -sel -c or xsel -o -b -- Note  In case neither of these tools  xsel and xclip  are preinstalled on your distro  you can probably find them in the repos

User · Answer

In vim under ubuntu terminal only   press shift   drag mouse to select a text in vim then ctrl   shift   c on the terminal  then ctrl   v on other editor

User · Answer

If your vim happens to be compiled without  xterm clipboard option like it is by default in Debian and I guess Ubuntu  you can pipe selection or entire buffer to external program that handles desktop clipboard  For xclip  which you may need to install previously   the command will be  w  xclip -sel clip

User · Answer

For Ubuntu - July 2018 Use the register  quot   to copy to the system clipboard  i e   quot  y instead of y   Likewise you can paste from  quot   to get text from the system clipboard  i e   quot  p instead of p   You have to also make sure that vim is compiled with support for the clipboard  Try  vim --version   grep  xterm clipboard -o   and if it s -xterm clipboard  a minus prefix  then you do not have support  Here are some instructions for swapping out with a working version of vim that has clipboard support     sudo apt-get purge vim   sudo apt-get autoremove  removes any extraneous vim dependency packages from system    sudo apt-get install vim-gnome  or sudo apt-get install vim-gtk3 for newer Ubuntu versions   Check again with vim --version   grep  xterm clipboard -o and you can confirm the clipboard is now available  ie   xterm clipboard  Good luck

User · Answer

I wrote a simple line in my  vimrc to get copy working  Hope this helps someone  My vim is not installed with Clipboard support  unfortunately  so none of these suggestions worked for me  Basically  paste this line in your  vimrc    map  lt C-c gt  y e   clipsongzboard lt CR gt P w  pbcopy lt CR gt  lt CR gt  bdelete  lt CR gt    If you d like to read details about what this does  you can read about this on my blog

User · Answer

In your vimrc file you can specify to automatically use the system clipboard for copy and paste   On Windows set   set clipboard unnamed   On Linux set  vim 7 3 74     set clipboard unnamedplus   NOTE  You may need to use an up to date version of Vim for these to work   http   vim wikia com wiki Accessing the system clipboard

User · Answer

In case you don t want to use any graphical interface for vim and you prefer to just stick with terminal emulator there may be a much simpler approach to this problem  Instead of using yank or anything like this  first take a look at documentation of terminal you use  I ve been struggling with the same issue  trying to use  clipboard and xclip and so on  and in the end it turned out that in my terminal emulator it s enough to just press shift and select any text you want to copy  That s it  Quite simple and no need for messing with configuration   I use urxvt by the way

User · Answer

If you have xclip an easy way of copying text to the clipboard is as follows    Yank text you want to copy   y command in vanilla vim  Type in  call system  xclip -selection clipboard          call system   runs a terminal command  It takes two arguments  the first the command  the second what to pipe to that command  For example  echom system  head -1    Hello nWorld   returns Hello  With some padding   echom returns the output of a command  call doesn t   xclip -selection clipboard just copies text into the system clipboard as opposed to the default X clipboard   Accessed by the middle moue button        returns the last yanked text    is the default register  but you could use any register  To see the contents of all registers  type  registers

User · Answer

if you connect to the unix system thru putty then follow the steps below to copy content of a file   Highlight text you want to copy   you ll be able to copy page by page   press ctrl c   it ll copy the text to clipboard paste in any external editor Done

User · Answer

I m on mac osx  10 15 3  and new to vim  I found this so frustrating and all the answers on here too complicated and or didn t apply to my situation  I ended up getting this working in 2 ways    key mapping that uses pbcopy  works on the old version of vim that ships with mac      Add vmap     w  pbcopy lt CR gt  lt CR gt  to your    vimrc    Now you can visually select and hit     two apostrophes  to copy to clipboard  Install newer version of vim so I can access the solution most recommended in other answers      brew install vim  alias vim  usr local bin vim  should add this to your    bashrc or equivalent     Now you can visually select and hit   yy to copy to clipboard

User · Answer

I m a Vim newby but  to copy all the text to system clipboard  e g if you want to paste it to a word processor or another text editor like gedit  mousepad etc      in normal mode    ggVGy   or  more simply      y  As suggested  I also installed vim-gtk and put   set clipboard unnamedplus   in my  vimrc  and everything works fine  If you want to copy only a portion of text  use visual mode  v   select the text you want to copy and press y   Finally  I suggest a clipboard program like Clipman  my favorite   Clipit  Parcellite or similar    I m using vim 8 0 in Debian Stretch Xfce   FORGIVE ME FOR MY ENGLISH   -

User · Answer

The   register will do this  In Windows    and   are equivalent  In unix there is a subtle difference between   and        Under Windows  the   and   registers   are equivalent  For X11 systems    though  they differ  For X11 systems      is the selection  and   is the cut buffer  like clipboard      http   vim wikia com wiki Accessing the system clipboard     is probably what you want most of the time  so I use   because it functions as I expect it to in both environments   In Linux distros you have to install vim-gtk  aka gvim  first to gain clipboard functionality  This is because non-gtk vim is typically compiled without X11 support  This is to allow it to run on console only machines  often servers    And for those confused about how to use registers when yanking or putting  you merely write   then the name of the register  So for copying something to the clipboard register you type   y and then to put you type   p  credit  Kyle Mathews

User · Answer

Use the register    to copy to the system clipboard  i e    y instead of y    Likewise you can paste from    to get text from the system clipboard  i e    p instead of p

User · Answer

If you are using GVim  you can also set guioptions  a  This will trigger automatic copy to clipboard of text that you highlight in visual mode  Drawback  Note that advanced clipboard managers  with history  will in this case get all your selection history

User · Answer

the solution for me was to install additional vim that has the clipboard option included  nbsp   sudo apt-get install vim-gnome

User · Answer

selecting with the the help of the mouse and right-click copy worked in my case   I didn t want the line numbers included so I  set nonumber before copying

User · Answer

I had issue because my vim was not supporting clipboard   vim --version   grep clip -clipboard        insert expand    path extra       user commands  emacs tags      -mouseshape       startuptime     -xterm clipboard   I installed vim-gnome  which support clipboard  and then checked again   vim --version   grep clipboard  clipboard        insert expand    path extra       user commands  emacs tags       mouseshape       startuptime      xterm clipboard   Now I am able to copy and paste using   y and   p respectively

User · Answer

Put set clipboard unnamed in your vimrc  Select what you want to copy in Visual mode  Press v to enter   Back to Normal mode  Press escape esc    press y to copy  If you want to paste something from OS s clipboard  press p P in Vim Normal mode

User · Answer

In my instance selecting text by highlighting  clicking and dragging  with my mouse was causing vim to enter into visual mode   On a mac anyway  the easiest solution is to use fn   mouse click and drag to avoid entering into visual mode   If you wish to avoid this behavior by default you can edit your vimrc

User · Answer

This question already has a lot of answers  I am adding my way which I think is quick  Quickly  you can press V  Shift   v  to active visual mode  In visible mode  you can use j and k to select the text you want to copy  After selection  use  quot  y  Now  selected text is copied to clipboard

User · Answer

I saw many answers on this question and the way to make this work was a combination of many  The steps I followed to make vim copy to system clipboard are  Uninstall vim using sudo apt remove vim   I was too lazy to find how to re-compile it with the  clipboard support  Install a different vim package called vim-athena using sudo apt install vim-athena that ships with  clipboard  Add to    vimrc the following line  set clipboard unnamedplus  Source the file by entering command mode and typing source    Save and exit   Note  I am using Ubuntu 20 04

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

This answer is specific to MAC users   The default VIM available with MAC does not come with clipboard option enabled  You need that option to access the system clipboard   To check if your vim has that option enabled use the below command  vim --version   In the result  you should have  clipboard  If it is -clipboard  then your VIM does NOT have the option to access the system clipboard   You need to MAKE and install your VIM with the option you need  Following are the commands     Create the directories you need   sudo mkdir -p  opt local bin   Download  compile  and install the latest Vim   cd     git clone https   github com vim vim git   cd vim     configure --prefix  opt local   make   sudo make install   Add the binary to your path  ahead of  usr bin   echo  PATH  opt local bin  PATH   gt  gt     bash profile   Reload bash profile so the changes take effect in this window   source    bash profile    The above will install the latest VIM with the option  clipboard enabled   Now you need to set the system clipboard  Append the following line to    vimrc  set clipboard unnamed   Now you can yank text to system clipboard  Below steps explains how to yank    In vim command mode press v  this will switch you to VISUAL mode  Move the cursor around to select the text or lines you need to copy  Press y  this will copy the selected text to clipboard  Go to any external application and CMD   v to paste    I use MACBook Pro with macOS Mojave and the above works in it

User · Answer

I ve been struggling with this for months till now on MacOsX using keyboard shortcuts  I know question isn t about using keyboard shorts  But this might help someone with the same concern   I found that if you uncheck      View -  Allow Mouse Reporting   from Terminal menu  you ll be able to copy to clipboard using      command   c   again

User · Answer

I wasn t able to copy to my clipboard s system because I had this in my    vimrc file    if has  mouse      set mouse a  endif   But if you add this line next  it will allow you to simply Ctrl c to get whatever you have selected into your clipboard   vmap  lt C-c gt    y   Original discussion and more details  Copy text out of vim with set mouse a enabled

User · Answer

Shift Ctrl C if you are in graphical mode of Linux  but first you need to select what you need to copy

User · Answer

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  install gui verion of vim    brew install macvim  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      Updated Method     I was never satisfied with set clipboard method for years  The biggest drawback is it will mess up your clipboard history  even when you use x for deletion  Here is a better and more elegant solution    Copy the text  range  of vim into the system clipboard   Hint  use v or V to select the range first  and then type the colon   to activate the Ex command     line-range yank   e g    5 10y     copy yank lines 5-10 to the system clipboard   register  Paste the content from the system clipboard into vim on a new line   put     Note    If you select a word range  the above will not work  use   y or   y to save this visual block to clipboard  However this is hard to type  I am still thinking about alternatives   help     or  help    for more informations brew info vim will be able to see other options for installing vim  Currrently it does not have any other options

User · Answer

My solution was putting the following line to  vimrc   map  lt C-y gt   w  xclip -sel c  lt CR gt  lt CR gt    The script copies the selected line  trough visual mode  or the file content  if none is selected  to the clipboard using Ctrl   y  I m  using Manjaro Linux if that matters

User · Answer

I have struggled a lot in copying to clipboard  Inside Vim it is quite simple using visual mode but if you want to copy to the clipboard things are quite messsed  I have simple method of copying using xclip utility  For this you must have to install xclip first  for the whole file it is very simple xclip -sel clip filename but if you want to copy only a particular range of line numbers tail -n   n1   filename    head -n   n2    xclip -sel clip you can make use of    bashrc to simplify this  rangecp copy lines from n1 to n2 from a given file to clipboard function rangecp         if   -f  1       then         if     -z  3           then             diff     3 -  2   1                diff  expr  3 -  2   1              tail -n   2   1   head -n  diff   xclip -sel clip         elif     -z  2           then             tail -n   2   1   xclip -sel clip         else             echo  quot Provide a range from  n1  lines to  n2  lines quot          fi     else         echo  quot    1   file doesn t exist quot      fi    then source    bashrc How to use rangecp filename txt 50 89 rangecp filename txt 50

User · Answer

I want to supplement a way to copy the line to the clipboard and use it on the function  here is an example that you open the URL in the browser let g chrome exe    C      Google Chrome Application chrome exe  function OpenURL        quot  copy the line and put it in the register       normal  quot  yy      execute  quot silent  start  quot  g chrome exe  quot   quot  getreg  quot   quot   endfunction  map  url  call OpenURL   lt CR gt

User · Answer

for OSX  like the 10342 answers above made clear  you need to make sure that vim supports the clipboard feature  said the the one that comes pre-shipped with OSX does NOT support clipboard  and that if you run  brew install vim it would work   Except that running vi will still make you run the preshipped OSX version  not the one you installed from brew   to get over this  I simply aliased my vim command to the brew version  not the OSX default one   alias vim   usr local Cellar vim 8 0 1100 1 bin vim    and now i m golden

User · Answer

Jacob Dalton has mentioned this in a comment  but nobody seems to have mentioned in an answer that vim has to be compiled with clipboard support for any of the suggestions mentioned here to work  Mine wasn t configured that way on Mac OS X by default and I had to rebuild vim  Use this the command to find out whether you have it or not vim --version   grep  clipboard    clipboard means you re good and the suggestions here will work for you  while -clipboard means you have to recompile and rebuild vim

User · Answer

Maybe someone will find it useful  I wanted to stay independent from X clipboard  and still be able to copy and paste some text between two running vims  This little code save the selected text in temp txt file for copying  Put the code below into your  vimrc  Use CTRL-c CTRL-v to do the job    vnoremap   w  cp  dev null   temp txt  amp  amp  cat     temp txt  noremap   r  cat   temp txt

User · Answer

Nothing above worked for me on my windows laptop     Ctrl C was fine for copying   but I needed Shift Insert to Paste     A good reason to always get a laptop where Insert can always be accessed without pressing a secondary key

User · Answer

Summing up and make it easier for newbies    To copy the current line  in command mode type     yy   To copy the whole file buffer  in command mode  first go to the beginning via gg  then type    yG   As noted  this requires  clipboard out of vim --version  which indicate the availability of clipboard support  -clipboard means no

[vim] How to copy to clipboard in Vim?

Examples related to vim

Examples related to clipboard