pyclip 0.5.4

Cross-platform clipboard utilities supporting both binary and text data.

PyClip

Cross-platform clipboard utilities supporting both binary and text data.

Some key features include:

• A cross-platform API (supports MacOS, Windows, Linux)
• Can handle arbitrary binary data
• On Windows, some additional clipboard formats are supported

Installation

Requires python 3.7+

pip install pyclip

Usage

pyclip can be used in Python code

import pyclip

pyclip.copy("hello clipboard") # copy data to the clipboard
cb_data = pyclip.paste() # retrieve clipboard contents 
print(cb_data)  # b'hello clipboard'
cb_text = pyclip.paste(text=True)  # paste as text
print(cb_text)  # 'hello clipboard'

pyclip.clear() # clears the clipboard contents
assert not pyclip.paste()

Or a CLI

# paste clipboard contents to stdout
python -m pyclip paste

# load contents to the clipboard from stdin
python -m pyclip copy < myfile.text
# same as above, but pipe from another command
some-program | python -m pyclip copy

Installing via pip also provides the console script pyclip:

pyclip copy < my_file.txt

This library implements functionality for several platforms and clipboard utilities.

• MacOS
• Windows
• Linux (with xclip)

If there is a platform or utility not currently listed, please request it by creating an issue.

Platform specific notes/issues

Windows

• On Windows, the pywin32 package is installed as a requirement.
• On Windows, additional clipboard formats are supported, including copying from a file (like if you right-click copy from File Explorer)

MacOS

MacOS has support for multiple backends. By default, the pasteboard package is used.

pbcopy/pbpaste can also be used as a backend, but does not support arbitrary binary data, which may lead to data being lost on copy/paste. This backend may be removed in a future release.

Linux

Linux requires xclip to work (which means you must also use X). Install with your package manager, e.g. sudo apt install xclip

Acknowledgements

Big thanks to Howard Mao for donating the PyClip project name on PyPI to this project.