CopyQ

CopyQ is advanced clipboard manager with editing and scripting features.

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

Overview

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

Items can be:

• edited with internal editor or with preferred text editor,
• moved to other tabs,
• drag'n'dropped to applications,
• marked with tag or a note,
• passed to or changed by custom commands,
• or simply removed.

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 and Run

To install CopyQ, use the binary package or installer provided for your system. For system-specific information, please see below. For unlisted systems, please follow the instructions in INSTALL to build the application.

Windows

On Windows you can install Chocolatey package.

Ubuntu

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

OS X

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

brew cask install 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) or
• copied back to clipboard (Enter, Ctrl+V).

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 Funcionality

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"

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 an image items:

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

Read more:

• Scripting
• Scripting Reference

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)

Ubuntu

Install Dependencies

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

Build the App

Change install prefix if needed:

git clone https://github.com/hluk/CopyQ.git
cd CopyQ
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local .
make

Install the App

sudo make install

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