Manipulate X clipboard from terminal using xclip utility which is a command line interface to X selections to easily copy and paste text from terminal to GUI applications.

Prerequisites

Install xclip utility.

$ sudo apt-get install xclip

Usage

Copy command output to clipboard selection.

$ free -m | xclip -selection clipboard -in

Display clipboard selection.

$ xclip -selection clipboard -out
total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7.7G        3.6G        656M        382M        3.4G        3.4G
Swap:          975M        682M        293M
Total:         8.6G        4.3G        949M

Copy file contents to clipboard selection.

$ xclip -selection clipboard -in /etc/hostname

Display clipboard selection and store it to specified file.

$ xclip -selection clip -out | tee /tmp/myhostname
milosz-XPS-13-9343

Chain multiple xclip commands to copy command output to primary and clipboard selections.

$ pwd | xclip -selection primary -in -f | xclip -selection clipboard -in

Display primary and clipboard selections.

$ xclip -selection clipboard -out
/home/milosz/
$ xclip -selection primary -out
/home/milosz/

Copy command output to clipboard selection and wait for exactly one request.

$ uptime | xclip -selection clipboard -in -loops 1

Display clipboard selection for the first time.

$ xclip -selection clip -out
20:53:47 up 66 days,  7:58, 17 users,  load average: 0,73, 0,55, 0,48

Display clipboard selection for the second time.

$ xclip -selection clip -out
Error: target STRING not available

Inspect xclip behavior.

$ uptime | xclip -selection clipboard -in -loops 2 -verbose
Loops: 2
Connected to X server.
Using selection: XA_CLIPBOARD
Using UTF8_STRING.
Waiting for 2 selection requests, Control-C to quit
  Waiting for selection request 1 of 2.
  Waiting for selection request 2 of 2.

Additional notes

Read clipboard specification to learn about selections which are just different clipboards and Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual for more details.

Install xsel utility if you want something slightly different.

ko-fi