How to copy the GNU Screen copy buffer to the clipboard?

Question

When using GNU Screen we can work with scrollback buffer also known as "copy mode" using the Ctrl+a+[ command.

In there we can copy text to the copy buffer by pressing space selecting the text and pressing space again.

Is there some way to copy this text from screen copy buffer to the X clipboard?

In my case I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 with gnome and Xorg.

score 45 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 13 '15 at 23:08

45

You can use a CLI clipboard tool like xsel or pbpaste and the cat utility to grab contents from STDIN. The steps on Linux with xsel are as follows:

Copy text from your screen session into GNU screen's copy buffer.
Run this command within screen: cat | xsel -b
If xsel didn't report any error, now dump screen's copy buffer to STDIN: Ctrl+a+]
Send an EOF to cat to terminate it: Ctrl+d

At this point, the contents of the screen copy buffer should be in your clipboard.

EDIT: As with all X programs, xsel needs to know how to contact your X server in order to access the clipboard. You should have your DISPLAY environment variable set appropriately.

edited Jan 13 '15 at 23:08

rubo77

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answered Apr 29 '13 at 19:25

bonsaiviking

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Beware, if you don't know what your doing with this (like myself)! The `cat | xsel -b` executed my entire history when I ran it from the shell. – yekta May 20 '13 at 13:32
@yekta there's no reason why it should do that. At what point in the 4 steps above did your shell start executing things? Did you somehow kill the `cat` command (with `^C`, perhaps) so it was not accepting input when you dumped the copy buffer? If we can solve this, maybe you can remove your downvote. – bonsaiviking May 20 '13 at 16:14
Excuse me, I just reproduced it and I believe that happened when I executed `Ctrl+a+]`. I pretty much followed steps 1-3. Also, when I ran step #2 I get `xsel: Can't open display: (null)` – yekta May 21 '13 at 18:22
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@yekta Yes, in order to use xsel, you need to have an X display with a clipboard, and the `DISPLAY` environment variable set to it. Most terminal emulators will set this, as will `ssh -X`. Since it was not set, xsel fails before accepting input, so the pipeline quits and the rest of the "keystrokes" from screen's buffer go to your shell. – bonsaiviking May 21 '13 at 18:59
Ah, that makes sense. If you'd like to edit the answer I can remove the down-vote. Having this information in the answer would also be helpful. Thanks. – yekta May 22 '13 at 19:38
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The `cat` in `cat | xsel -b` is a cute way to connect `xsel`'s input to a pipe (as opposed to a `tty`) and trigger `xsel`'s "input" mode; but `xsel` has the `-i` flag to explicitly trigger input mode. So `xsel -bi` is probably preferable to `cat | xsel -b`. – Daniel Wagner Jul 31 '15 at 00:42
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I found a less manual way of doing this. Please refer to my answer below. – kungfuspider Dec 10 '16 at 00:19

score 13 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 18 '14 at 17:32

This answer applies to OS X.

After copying the desired text into the GNU Screen paste buffer using copy mode, do the following:

In any of your screen windows, type pbcopy <enter>.
Then paste your text into the terminal using the GNU Screen paste command (Ctrl-a ] unless you've changed your escape key).
If the text does not end in a newline, press <enter> to insert one.
Finally, press Ctrl-d to cause pbcopy to push the text to the system clipboard.

Then you can paste the text elsewhere in OS X as usual using Command-v or an equivalent menu option.

score 13 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 25 '19 at 20:37

13

There is a simpler and less manual way to do this. In your screen .rc file, add the following line:

bindkey -m ' ' eval 'stuff \040' 'writebuf' 'exec sh -c "/usr/bin/pbcopy < /tmp/screen-exchange"'

How to use the copy functionality:

screen -c path/to/screen/config.rc
Hit Ctrl+A then Esc to enter copy mode.
Scroll up the text buffer and find the spot you want to leave your start marker for copying, then hit space.
Scroll down and select the text you wish to copy. When you are done, hit space again.
The text will now be in your clipboard.

EDIT: On Linux with no pbcopy but with clipit, you can use as below:

bindkey -m ' ' eval 'stuff \040' 'writebuf' 'exec sh -c "/bin/cat /tmp/screen-exchange | /bin/clipit"'

edited Nov 25 '19 at 20:37

v01d

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answered Dec 10 '16 at 00:18

kungfuspider

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Is there a similar method for this in Debian? Love the simplicity. – Nate Ritter Jun 21 '17 at 10:15
I am using putty from windows and login to Linux using screen. But don't have pbcopy on Linux I am using. What can I do here to copy text into my clipboad? – Mithun B Jan 22 '18 at 13:37
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the same can be done in debian by using clipit. sh -c "/tmp/screen-exchange | clipit" – Strudle Apr 22 '18 at 10:25
On ubuntu 18.04.4 I had to change `/bid/clipit` to `/usr/bin/cliptit` and i had to install `libcanberra-gtk-module`. – Olian04 Apr 13 '20 at 13:41

CoderX · Answer 4 · 2017-05-19T19:26:52.877

This answer works for only a scenario where your end target is to paste the copied buffer contents immediately.

The simplest way to do this is by splitting your screen into two regions. You can do this by hitting CTRL+a then |^{'This is not an i. It is the PIPE sign on your keyboard'}

Hit CTRL+a then TAB to switch to the second region, CTRL+a then c to create a new session in the second region.

If you want to copy from nano and paste in terminal, open up the file in nano on the left region, hit CTRL+a then ESC, scroll to the start point of your copy location and hit SPACE, select the text by scrolling to the end point and hit SPACE again to mark copy.

Now, all you have to do is hit CTRL+a then TAB to switch to the region on your right and hit CTRL+a then ].

Your text will be written out to the command line. Note that you can also check for hardcopy option if you want to write directly to file.

This is a description of how to use copy mode. The OP already knows how to use copy mode: the question is how to move data from the copy mode buffer to the system clipboard. This is not an answer to the question asked. — Benubird, Sep 12 '17 at 08:40
@Benubird - I know. But I gave him another option to get where I thought he needed to go which is a copy paste. Helped someone! — CoderX, Aug 16 '18 at 08:32

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 01 '20 at 01:12

5

Since nobody seems to have directly answered the question:

Once you have copied the output you want into your buffer you need to

Open a text editor with a new file i.e. vim somefile.txt
Go into edit mode i.e. i in vim
Press Ctrl + a then ] which will dump the contents of the buffer you just filled into the text editor

ta-da!

answered Apr 01 '20 at 01:12

CpILL

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This is amazing! How did you figure it out? – Ray Jul 07 '20 at 03:07
@Ray skillz bro – CpILL Jul 14 '20 at 03:29

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 07 '19 at 04:52

Exit your ssh terminal session, if you are currently connected to a server.

If you are using XQuartz on Mac OS and xsel on the server. You should update the XQuartz pasteboard settings by selecting Preferences in the xQuartz application menu.

XQuartz settings:

ssh into the remote machine and try run:

xsel -p <<<"THIS IS A TEST".

Press cmd + v and "THIS IS A TEST" should be output.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered May 25 '21 at 17:18

I wanted a way to do this programmatically similarly to @kungfuspider and tweaked his solution to work for Ubuntu WSL running on Windows.

Setup:

Download win32yank executable and place win32yank.exe somewhere useful (I created a symbolic link to it in /usr/bin with ln -s <path to exe> /usr/bin/win32yank)
Place the following into ~/.screenrc (from @kungfuspider). You might need to modify the command to point to the correct cat and win32yank locations.

bindkey -m ' ' eval 'stuff \040' 'writebuf' 'exec sh -c "cat /tmp/screen-exchange | win32yank -i --crlf"'

Reload ~/.screenrc without killing your session by executing CTRL+a : source ~/.screenrc

How To Use:

Enter copy mode with CTRL+a [
Move around with vim style key movement or arrow keys
Start selecting text by hitting space
Highlight desired text and finish copy by hitting space again, text should now be in your Windows clipboard and can be pasted back to Ubuntu with a right-click.

Note: It is very important to finish copy with a space because that's what the bindkey command is using to map win32yank

score -1 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 19 '13 at 19:46

-1

If it's just a little bit of info that you want to copy just highlight it with your mouse and then paste it where you want.

If you're trying to get a lot of info the screen session can be logged to a file and then you can copy from the file or clean it up a bit and use it for instructions on doing things

answered Apr 19 '13 at 19:46

John

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i'm trying to avoid the mouse use to get more speed in my workflow, and generally it's not too much info. thanks for the answer! – Samuel G. P. Apr 19 '13 at 20:22
ok. The copy/paste buffer in screen is only between screen windows. So you could have another window and do the copy paste to the other window or paste it out to a file. – John Apr 19 '13 at 20:37
Logging the whole session to a file seems like the easiest and best way for certain situations. It would be helpful to know how to do that. – mivk Nov 11 '17 at 15:38

score -3 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 28 '15 at 09:08

-3

Finally today I found a solution with mouse:

Hold down Ctrl and right click with mouse. Copy/paste context menu shows up.

Some screens at https://michalzuber.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/gnu-screen-copy-paste-with-mouse/

answered Jan 28 '15 at 09:08

michalzuber

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I think your solution is not a screen feature, but something related to X. what you need are the copy-paste tools explained here: https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/screen.html#Paste – axd Jun 02 '16 at 14:05

How to copy the GNU Screen copy buffer to the clipboard?

9 Answers9

XQuartz settings: