FISH_CLIPBOARD_PASTE(1)

✨ FISH_CLIPBOARD_PASTE 💖

okay bestie, so this is a page from the fish-shell manual and honestly? it's a little icon. it's fish_clipboard_paste and it's about to make your clipboard behave. 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

fish_clipboard_paste — get text from the system's clipboard. that's it, that's the whole job, and she does it flawlessly. 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

fish_clipboard_paste

fish_clipboard_paste | foo

two ways to serve, pick your vibe ✨

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👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

okay so the fish_clipboard_paste function copies text from the system clipboard. main character behaviour, no cap. 🫶

here's the part where you gotta pay attention, bestie — it's giving situational awareness:

• if its stdout is not a terminal (see isatty <>), it will output everything there, as-is, without any additional newlines. literally just the text, zero extra decoration, and honestly? respect. 😌
• if it is a terminal, it will put the text in the commandline instead. so it lands right where you're typing. magical. 🌈

and if it outputs to the commandline, it will automatically escape the output if the cursor is currently inside single-quotes, so it's suitable for single-quotes (meaning it escapes ' and \\). so your quotes stay safe, your text stays intact, and nothing breaks. it's giving considerate. 🧚

ngl it's bound to Ctrl+V by default. so like... just press it. 💖

fish_clipboard_paste works by calling a system-specific backend. if it doesn't appear to work, you may need to install yours — yes, this is a "have you tried installing the thing" moment, sorry, but it's true. 🙈

💀 currently supported backends 💀

• pbpaste
• wl-paste using wayland
• xsel and xclip for X11
• powershell.exe on Windows — heads up bestie, this backend has encoding limitations and uses windows line endings that fish_clipboard_paste undoes. she cleans up after it, iconic. 👑

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• fish_clipboard_copy — copy text to the system's clipboard <> which does the inverse. the literal mirror of this girlie, obsessed. 💜

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🍓 COPYRIGHT 🍓

fish-shell developers 🫶

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and that's the tea, bestie — this page came to you from fish-shell 4.9, dated Sep 08, 2026, and it's filed under FISH_CLIPBOARD_PASTE(1) in your friendly neighbourhood manual. go paste something slay. 💅✨🌸