How To Copy Any Text To Clipboard From Terminal In Ubuntu?

xclip is a commandline interface to the X selections (clipboard). This tool helps you to copy the output of any command directly into the clipboard and saves you from manually copying and pasting from the terminal. If you have tried copying from the terminal output, you have already realized how tedious the task is. Imagine, if the output is very long, it will be difficult to copy the output manually. This is where xclip tool can benefit you. You can copy the output of any command using this tool. It also allows you to copy the contents of a file directly into the clipboard as well as print the contents of a selection to the standard out.

Installing xclip

xclip is available as a package for Ubuntu so, it can be installed as below. Open a terminal Ctrl + Alt + T and run:

sudo apt-get install xclip

Using xclip

To copy the output of a command into the clipboard, pipe the command into xclip as below:

Long version

ls -la | xclip -selection clipboard

Short version

ls -la | xclip -sel clip

This puts the output of ls -la command into the clipboard, and you can now paste the output into any other program (eg. a text editor) with Ctrl + V outside terminal and Ctrl + Shift + V inside terminal.

To copy the contents of a file (eg. /etc/apt/sources.list) into the clipboard:

Long version

xclip -selection clipboard -in /etc/apt/sources.list

Short version

xclip -sel clip -i /etc/apt/sources.list

To print the contents of the clipboard:

Long version

xclip -selection clipboard -out

Short version

xclip -sel clip -o

To save the contents of the clipboard to a file (eg. ~/myfile.txt):

Long version

xclip -selection clipboard -out > ~/myfile.txt

Short version

xclip -sel clip -o > ~/myfile.txt