CopyQ

CopyQ is advanced clipboard manager with editing and scripting features.

• Downloads
• Web Site
• Documentation
• Mailing List
• Bug Reports
• Donate
• Scripting API

Overview

CopyQ monitors system clipboard and saves its content in customized tabs. Saved clipboard can be later copied and pasted directly into any application.

Features

• Support for Linux, Windows and OS X 10.9+
• Store text, HTML, images or any other custom formats
• Quickly browse and filter items in clipboard history
• Sort, create, edit, remove, copy/paste, drag'n'drop items in tabs
• Add notes or tags to items
• System-wide shortcuts with customizable commands
• Paste items with shortcut or from tray or main window
• Fully customizable appearance
• Advanced command-line interface and scripting
• Ignore clipboard copied from some windows or containing some text
• Support for simple Vim-like editor and shortcuts
• Many more features

Install

To install CopyQ, use the binary package or installer provided for your system.

For unlisted systems, please follow the instructions in Build from Source Code.

Windows

On Windows you can use one of the following options to install the app:

• The Installer (setup.exe)
• Portable zip package
• Scoop package from the extras bucket.
• Chocolatey package

Using Scoop:

scoop install copyq

Using Chocolatey:

choco install copyq

OS X

On OS X you can use Homebrew to install the app.

brew cask install copyq

Debian 10+, Ubuntu 18.04+, and their derivatives

Install copyq package.

copyq-plugins is highly recommended. copyq-doc available.

Ubuntu PPA

Install and keep CopyQ always up to date by running the following three commands from the terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hluk/copyq
sudo apt update
sudo apt install copyq

Fedora

Install copyq package.

Arch Linux

Install copyq package.

Other Linux Distributions

Install Flatpak and com.github.hluk.copyq from Flathub.

flatpak install flathub com.github.hluk.copyq

Start the application from menu or with following command.

flatpak run com.github.hluk.copyq

Using the App

To start the application double-click the program icon or run copyq.

The list with clipboard history is accessible by clicking on system tray icon or running copyq toggle.

Copying text or image to clipboard will create new item in the list.

Selected items can be:

• edited (F2),
• removed (Delete),
• sorted (Ctrl+Shift+S, Ctrl+Shift+R),
• moved around (with mouse or Ctrl+Up/Down),
• copied back to clipboard (Ctrl+C) or
• pasted to previously active window (Enter).

All items will be restored when application is started next time.

To exit the application select Exit from tray menu or press Ctrl-Q keys in the application window.

Read more:

• Basic Usage
• Keyboard

Adding Functionality

To create custom action that can be executed from menu, with shortcut or when clipboard changes:

• go to Command dialog (F6 shortcut),
• click Add button and select predefined command or create new one,
• optionally change the command details (shortcut, name),
• click OK to save the command.

One of very useful predefined commands there is "Show/hide main window".

Read more:

• Writing Commands
• CopyQ Commands Repository

Command Line

CopyQ has powerful command line and scripting interface.

Note: The main application must be running to be able to issue commands using command line.

Print help for some useful command line arguments:

copyq --help
copyq --help add

Insert some texts to the history:

copyq add -- 'first item' 'second item' 'third item'

Omitting double-dash (--) in the command above would mean that slash (\) in arguments will be treated as special character so that \n is new line character, \t is tab, \\ is slash, \x is x etc.

Create single item containing two lines:

copyq add 'first line\nsecond line'

Print content of the first three items:

copyq read 0 1 2
copyq separator "," read 0 1 2

Show current clipboard content:

copyq clipboard
copyq clipboard text/html
copyq clipboard \?    # lists formats in clipboard

Copy text to the clipboard:

copyq copy "Some Text"

Load file content into clipboard:

copyq copy - < file.txt
copyq copy text/html < index.html
copyq copy image/jpeg - < image.jpg

Create image items:

copyq write image/gif - < image.gif
copyq write image/svg - < image.svg

Read more:

• Scripting
• Scripting API

Build from Source Code

To build the application from source code, first install the required dependencies:

• Git
• CMake
• Qt
• Optionally on Linux/X11: development files and libraries for Xtst and Xfixes
• Optionally QtWebKit (more advanced HTML rendering)

Install Dependencies

Ubuntu

sudo apt install \
  git cmake \
  qtbase5-private-dev \
  qtscript5-dev \
  qttools5-dev \
  qttools5-dev-tools \
  libqt5svg5-dev \
  libqt5x11extras5-dev \
  libxfixes-dev \
  libxtst-dev \
  libqt5svg5

RHEL / CentOS

sudo yum install \
  gcc-c++ git cmake \
  libXtst-devel libXfixes-devel \
  qt5-qtbase-devel \
  qt5-qtsvg-devel \
  qt5-qttools-devel \
  qt5-qtscript-devel \
  qt5-qtx11extras-devel

Build the App

Change install prefix if needed:

git clone https://github.com/hluk/CopyQ.git
cd CopyQ
cmake .
make

You can now run the built app.

./copyq

Contributions

You can help translate the application (click the banner below) or help fix issues and implement new features.

Read more:

• Build from Source Code
• Fixing Bugs and Adding Features
• Translations