clipman(1)

💖 clipman(1) — your clipboard's new bestie 💖

okay so this is the clipman(1) page from the General Commands Manual, and honestly? it's giving "tiny tool, big job." sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's get into it.

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✨ NAME ✨

clipman — a clipboard manager for Wayland 🫶

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

clipman [<options>] <command> [<args> ...]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

it's a basic clipboard manager for Wayland, bestie — but the icon behavior is that it supports persisting copy buffers after an application exits. like, the app dips and your clipboard still remembers. main character energy fr fr 💅

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -h, --help — shows context-sensitive help. also go ahead and try --help-long and --help-man if you're nosy (affectionate) 💖
• --histpath="~/.local/share/clipman.json" — the path of the history file. that's the default one right there ☝️
• --primary — serve the item to the primary clipboard. default is --no-primary, just so you know 👀
• --notify — sends desktop notifications when there are errors
• --err-on-no-selection — exits with an exit 1 when no selection is made in the picker
• --min-char — the minimum number of characters before something gets stored
• -v, --version — shows the application version

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👑 COMMANDS 👑

🧁 help [<command>...]

shows help. that's it. that's the whole vibe.

💾 store [<flags>]

records clipboard events — you run this as an argument to wl-paste --watch, iykyk

• --max-items=15 — the history size
• -P, --no-persist — don't persist a copy buffer after a program exits
• --unix — normalizes line endings to LF

🔍 pick --tool=TOOL [<flags>]

picks an item out of your clipboard history ✨

• --max-items=15 — scrollview length
• -t, --tool=TOOL — which selector to use: wofi/bemenu/CUSTOM/STDOUT
• -T, --tool-args="" — extra arguments passed to the --tool
• --print0 — separates items using NULL; highly recommended if your tool supports --read0 or similar 🙌
• --normalize-unicode — normalizes to NFC per https://unicode.org/reports/tr15

🧹 clear [<flags>]

removes item/s from history 🗑️

• --max-items=15 — scrollview length
• -t, --tool=TOOL — which selector to use: wofi/bemenu/CUSTOM/STDOUT
• -T, --tool-args="" — extra arguments passed to the --tool
• -a, --all — removes all items
• --print0 — separates items using NULL; recommended if your tool supports --read0 or similar
• --normalize-unicode — normalizes to NFC per https://unicode.org/reports/tr15

🌈 restore

serves the last recorded item from history

⭐ show-history

shows all items from history

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🧚 USAGE 🧚

run the binary in your Sway session by adding this to your config:

exec wl-paste -t text --watch clipman store

or, if you wanna log errors:

exec wl-paste -t text --watch clipman store \
    1>> PATH/TO/LOGFILE 2>&1

it is highly recommended that you run clipman with the --no-persist option — go read KNOWN ISSUES, seriously, bestie, do it 😭

for primary clipboard support, also add this:

exec wl-paste -p -t text --watch clipman store -P \
    --histpath="~/.local/share/clipman-primary.json"

note that both the -p in wl-paste and the -P in clipman are mandatory in this case. no cap, both of them. 👑

to query the history and select items, run the binary as:

clipman pick -t wofi

you can assign it to a keybinding:

bindsym $mod+h exec clipman pick -t wofi

you can pass additional arguments to the selector like this:

clipman pick --tool wofi -T'--prompt=my-prompt -i'

both --prompt and -i are flags of wofi, fyi 💅

you can use a custom selector like this:

clipman pick --print0 --tool=CUSTOM --tool-args= \
    "fzf --prompt 'pick > ' --bind 'tab:up' --cycle --read0"

to only paste if there's actually something selected:

bindsym $mod+v exec "clipman pick -t wofi --err-on-no-selection \
    && wtype -M ctrl -M shift v"

to remove items from history:

clipman clear -t wofi
clipman clear --all

to serve the last history item at startup, add this to your Sway config:

exec clipman restore

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💀 BUGS 💀

when you hit a clipboard-related bug, pls try to see if it still happens without clipman running — because it's more likely to be caused by one of our own known issues rather than by wl-clipboard. don't blame the wrong tool 🙈

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😭 KNOWN ISSUES 😭

we only support plain text. that's the whole thing. periodt.

by default, we keep serving the last copied item even after its owner has exited. which means that — unless you run with the --no-persist option — you'll always immediately lose rich content. examples, since you asked:

• vim's visual block mode breaks
• copying images in Firefox breaks
• if you copy a bookmark in Firefox, you won't be able to paste it in another bookmark folder
• if you copy formatted text inside Libre Office you'll lose all formatting on paste

run clipman store with the --no-persist option if you are affected. unfortunately, it seems that there is no way to make them play well together. like, at all. 🫠

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okay that's the whole page!! this was clipman(1) from the General Commands Manual, and the whole thing signs off as clipman(1) — no extra version line, no date, just the page name doing its little wave goodbye. slay, go manage a clipboard 💖🎀✨