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Clipboard

Rune copies and pastes through your operating system's clipboard by default, so text you yank in the editor is available to other applications and vice versa. This is controlled by the top-level clipboard setting, which defaults to "system":

clipboard: "system" # or "memory"

How the system clipboard works​

Rune talks to the platform clipboard through the standard system utilities. What it needs depends on your operating system:

PlatformWhat Rune uses
macOSpbcopy and pbpaste (ship with macOS)
Linux (Wayland)wl-copy and wl-paste from wl-clipboard
Linux (X11)xclip, or xsel

On macOS the system clipboard works out of the box. On Linux Rune shells out to one of the utilities above, so at least one must be installed and on your PATH.

On a Wayland session Rune prefers wl-clipboard; on X11 it uses xclip and falls back to xsel. Install whichever matches your session, for example:

# Debian/Ubuntu, Wayland
sudo apt install wl-clipboard

# Debian/Ubuntu, X11
sudo apt install xclip   # or: sudo apt install xsel

When the system clipboard is unavailable​

If none of the expected utilities are present (a common case on a headless or freshly installed Linux box), Rune cannot reach the system clipboard. When that happens Rune keeps copy and paste working through an internal in-memory clipboard so you are never stuck, and it shows a system clipboard: … warning so you know the text did not leave Rune.

The fix is to install one of the utilities listed above for your platform.

Suppressing the warnings with memory​

If you cannot or do not want to install a clipboard utility, set the clipboard mode to "memory":

clipboard: "memory"

In memory mode Rune uses an in-memory clipboard that lives entirely inside the editor. Copy and paste work between Rune's own buffers and registers, but the contents never cross the boundary to other applications. Because Rune never touches the system clipboard in this mode, the system clipboard: … warnings are suppressed.

The clipboard setting lives alongside the rest of your editor configuration; see Config for where the file lives and how to edit it.

Highlighting in the terminal​

Dragging across text in a terminal highlights it and copies it to the clipboard, as do double-clicking a word and triple-clicking a line. A highlight starts only once the pointer leaves the cell you pressed, so a click (for example to focus the window) does not replace what you copied before.

When the program running in the terminal tracks the mouse, as vim does with set mouse=a, clicks and drags go to that program instead and the terminal does not highlight or copy. Use the program's own copy command, such as yanking to the + register in vim.

Programs in the terminal​

A program running in a terminal can set the clipboard itself through the OSC 52 escape sequence, which is how tmux, vim and similar tools copy from inside a terminal, including over SSH. The same sequence can also ask the terminal for the clipboard contents.

Both are controlled by terminal.clipboard:

terminal:
  clipboard:
    write: true # programs may set the clipboard
    read: false # programs may read the clipboard

Writing is on by default. Reading is off by default: anything whose output reaches a terminal can send the sequence, such as a file you cat, a build log or a command on a remote host, and a read hands it whatever you last copied, which may be a password or a token. Turn it on only if a tool you trust needs it, and bear in mind that writing still lets such output replace what you were about to paste.

Programs that ask the terminal whether it accepts OSC 52 (the Ms capability, queried with XTGETTCAP) are told so while writing is allowed. Neovim 0.11 asks on startup and, when it finds no clipboard tool of its own, as is common on a remote host, copies through OSC 52 without any configuration. With writing off, the terminal reports no such capability and Neovim keeps its registers to itself.

See also​

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