ClipCommander

Clipboard selection monitor youtube-dl GUI front-end

• License: MIT License
• Author: Matteljay
• Language: Python (>= 3.5)
• Homepage: https://github.com/Matteljay

Screenshots

Introduction

ClipCommander is a clipboard selection monitor. It is a productivity tool pre-configured to work as a GUI/front-end for youtube-dl. It can be considered a Firefox Plug-in without requiring integration into the add-on menu. Simply copy a YouTube video link to the clipboard and ClipCommander will pop-up with several download format options.

ClipCommander is highly configurable to execute any terminal/shell command based on a clipboard selection using Python RegEx string magic (Regular expressions). The actions are highly customizable.

For example text-to-speech festival, BitTorrent client transmission, custom clipboard logging operations and more. On Linux based systems you will get instant feedback based on your text selections (no Ctrl+c required!)

Installation

Package dependencies are kept to a minimum. The proper installation guides for your system can be found via these links:

• Kivy & Pillow Version 1.10.1 with SDL2 window provider are required! (NOT 1.9 with PyGame). An updated Python Imaging Library is always recommended with a graphical Python program.

• pip3 & setuptools These are Python 3 installation tools. Universally useful!

• xclip & xterm Handy tools that work on almost all Linux flavors.

• youtube-dl & ffmpeg All the magic required to get videos cleanly from YouTube. Must be very up-to-date to work!

Debian Linux

For most up-to-date Debian based systems like Ubuntu Linux and Linux Mint this should work as root:

add-apt-repository ppa:kivy-team/kivy
apt-get install python3-kivy python3-pip python3-setuptools xterm xclip ffmpeg
pip3 install --upgrade youtube-dl pillow clipcommander

Arch Linux

For the more up-to-date Arch Linux (Manjaro) simply run as root:

pacman -S python-kivy python-pillow python-pip python-setuptools xclip xterm youtube-dl ffmpeg
pip3 install clipcommander

Daemonize

It is easy to daemonize ClipCommander. That means it can run silently in the background. It can pop up only when the clipboard selection is matched against one of the user defined conditions. To accomplish this hidden modus, enable the option in the app (see screenshot above).

When in hidden modus, you can force showing the GUI by selecting the text !showyourself

To make ClipCommander start at system boot, simply add this app to the Startup Applications list on your desktop (e.g. Cinnamon).

How to launch

When finished, the shortcut icon can be found from your menu-bar in the Office category. If the icon does not show up, you may need to restart your desktop. Alternatively, open your graphical user terminal and type clipcommander.py

For developers, hackers and testers

Other ways to install are explained below. The above dependencies are still required! Only use the info below if you know what you are doing.

Option 1

You can install from tar.gz or the GitHub master tree. First, download and extract the archive from the releases page. Then run from within the extracted folder:

sudo pip3 install .

Option 2

Alternatively, you can run it without installing to the root filesystem. Again, extract the downloaded archive. Then run:

pip3 install --user -r requirements.txt
./clipcommander.py

More platforms

Other UNIX

Other flavors of Linux are untested but there is no reason for them not to work. Slackware, Gentoo, openSUSE, Fedora, Red Hat, Mandriva, CentOS, macOS,...

Android, iPhone and Windows

These platforms probably won't work as they feature different clipboard mechanisms and terminal emulators. If a strong desire exists, find a way to motivate me :-)

Contact info & donations

See the contact file.