clipmenu is a simple clipboard manager using dmenu, rofi or similar.

Demo

Usage

clipmenud

Start clipmenud, then run clipmenu to select something to put on the clipboard. For systemd users, a user service called clipmenud is packaged as part of the project.

For those using a systemd unit and not using a desktop environment which does it automatically, you must import $DISPLAY so that clipmenud knows which X server to use. For example, in your ~/.xinitrc do this prior to launching clipmenud:

systemctl --user import-environment DISPLAY

clipmenu

You may wish to bind a shortcut in your window manager to launch clipmenu.

All args passed to clipmenu are transparently dispatched to dmenu. That is, if you usually call dmenu with args to set colours and other properties, you can invoke clipmenu in exactly the same way to get the same effect, like so:

clipmenu -i -fn Terminus:size=8 -nb '#002b36' -nf '#839496' -sb '#073642' -sf '#93a1a1'

For a full list of environment variables that clipmenud can take, please see man clipmenud.

There is also clipdel to delete clips, and clipctl to enable or disable clipboard monitoring.

Features

The behavior of clipmenud can be customized through a config file. As some examples of things you can change:

• Customising the maximum number of clips stored (default 1000)
• Disabling clip collection temporarily with clipctl disable, reenabling with clipctl enable
• Not storing clipboard changes from certain applications, like password managers
• Taking direct ownership of the clipboard
• ...and much more.

See man clipmenu.conf to view all possible configuration variables and what they do.

Supported launchers

Any dmenu-compliant application will work, but here are CM_LAUNCHER configurations that are known to work:

• dmenu (the default)
• fzf
• rofi

Installation

Several distributions, including Arch and Nix, provide clipmenu as an official package called clipmenu.

Manual installation

If your distribution doesn't provide a package, you can manually install using make install (or better yet, create a package for your distribution!).

How does it work?

clipmenud

1. clipmenud passively monitors X11 clipboard selections (PRIMARY, CLIPBOARD, and SECONDARY) for changes using XFixes (no polling).
2. If clipmenud detects changes to the clipboard contents, it writes them out to storage and indexes using a hash as the filename.

clipmenu

1. clipmenu reads the index to find all available clips.
2. dmenu (or another configured launcher) is executed to allow the user to select a clip.
3. After selection, the clip is put onto the PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD X selections.