clipmenu is a simple clipboard manager using dmenu (or rofi with CM_LAUNCHER=rofi) and xsel.

Demo

Usage

Start clipmenud, then run clipmenu to select something to put on the clipboard.

A systemd user service for starting clipmenud is installed as part of the project.

If you want to start clipmenud immediately via systemd and have it be started when you login, run:

systemctl --user enable --now clipmenud

You may wish to bind a shortcut in your window manager to launch clipmenu.

All args passed to clipmenu are transparently dispatched to dmenu. That is, if you usually call dmenu with args to set colours and other properties, you can invoke clipmenu in exactly the same way to get the same effect, like so:

clipmenu -i -fn Terminus:size=8 -nb '#002b36' -nf '#839496' -sb '#073642' -sf '#93a1a1'

If you prefer to collect clips on demand rather than running clipmenud as a daemon, you can bind a key to the following command for one-off collection:

CM_ONESHOT=1 clipmenud

For a full list of environment variables that clipmenud can take, please see clipmenud --help.

Installation

Several distributions, including Arch and Nix, provide clipmenu as an official package called clipmenu.

Installation - Manual

If your distribution doesn't provide a package, you can run the following the commands to install this. (Or better yet, create package for your distribution!). You'll first need to install xsel and clipnotify. If you'll also need dmenu unless you plan to set CM_LAUNCHER to a different value, like rofi.

 git clone https://github.com/cdown/clipmenu.git
 cd clipmenu
 sudo make install

How does it work?

clipmenud is less than 200 lines, and clipmenu is less than 100, so hopefully it should be fairly self-explanatory. However, at the most basic level:

clipmenud

1. clipmenud uses clipnotify to wait for new clipboard events.
2. If clipmenud detects changes to the clipboard contents, it writes them out to the cache directory and an index using a hash as the filename.

clipmenu

1. clipmenu reads the index to find all available clips.
2. dmenu is executed to allow the user to select a clip.
3. After selection, the clip is put onto the PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD X selections.