CLI Clipboard Ls

`ed clipboard ls`

Lists the history with the number every other verb takes.

ed clipboard ls [--pinned] [--search <text>] [--limit <n>] [--json]

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
`--pinned`	flag	off	Keep only pinned entries.
`--search <text>`	string	unset	Keep only entries whose preview or source app contains this text, case-insensitively.
`--limit <n>`	integer, 0 or more	`25`	Show at most this many entries. Pass 0 for all of them.
`--json`	flag	off	Emit JSON on stdout.

The filters run in that order: --search first, then --pinned, then --limit on what is left. --search is trimmed and lowercased before it is used, so a value that is only whitespace filters nothing, and it matches the preview text and the source application, which is the same match the panel's search field makes.

Numbers are assigned before any filtering, against the whole history, so a number you read out of ed clipboard ls --pinned still names the same entry to get and rm. The list can therefore be numbered 1, 4, 9 with no gap being an error.

--json is an array of entry objects, one per shown row, in display order:

[
  {
    "copiedAt": "2026-08-06T23:02:21Z",
    "family": "text",
    "id": "5C2F0A1E-1B4D-4E0A-9A21-7C3B4D8E6F10",
    "index": 1,
    "isText": true,
    "kind": "txt",
    "pinned": true,
    "preview": "ssh pulkit@10.0.0.4",
    "sizeBytes": 19,
    "sourceApp": "Ghostty"
  },
  {
    "copiedAt": "2026-08-06T22:41:08Z",
    "family": "image",
    "id": "0D1A7B33-9F42-4C58-8E71-2B6A0C4F91DD",
    "index": 2,
    "isText": false,
    "kind": "png",
    "pinned": false,
    "preview": "PNG image",
    "sizeBytes": 1245184,
    "sourceApp": "Preview"
  }
]

kind is the entry's file extension, the thing the blob is stored as: txt, json, sql, png, rtf, html, url, files, weburl, data and so on. family is the coarse bucket the app groups by, one of text, richText, html, image, file, document, media or data. Both keys are present on every entry object the group emits. preview and sourceApp are null rather than absent when the entry has neither.

Examples:

ed clipboard ls
ed clipboard ls --limit 0
ed clipboard ls --pinned --json
ed clipboard ls --search token --limit 5

$ ed clipboard ls --limit 4
#  KIND          SIZE       FROM     PREVIEW
1  txt   pinned  19 bytes   Ghostty  ssh pulkit@10.0.0.4
2  png           1.2 MB     Preview  PNG image
3  html          8 KB       Safari   Edith keeps a history of everything you copy
4  txt           142 bytes  Xcode    func render(headers: [String]) -> String

The third column has no header; it holds the word pinned and is otherwise blank. Sizes are formatted the way Finder formats them, so read sizeBytes from --json when you need the exact count. Previews are capped at 500 characters at capture time, and the table flattens newlines and tabs to spaces so one entry is always one row.

A truncated list says so on stderr and still exits 0:

$ ed clipboard ls
showing 25 of 1217; pass --limit 0 for all of them

That note is only printed on the human path. --json never prints it, so a script that wants everything has to pass --limit 0 itself.

An empty history is not an error here: ls prints the header row and nothing else, ls --json prints [], and both exit 0. The verbs that take a number are the ones that refuse.