How to copy the GNU Screen copy buffer to the clipboard? [closed]

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.

Sparid

Answer 1

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:

1. Copy text from your screen session into GNU screen's copy buffer.
2. Run this command within screen: cat | xsel -b
3. If xsel didn't report any error, now dump screen's copy buffer to STDIN: Ctrl+a+]
4. 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.

Maxama

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. – Estragon

@Estragon 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. – Maxama

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) – Estragon

@Estragon 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. – Maxama

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. – Estragon

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. – Docia

I found a less manual way of doing this. Please refer to my answer below. – Ear

The MacOS equivalent of this use of xsel is pbcopy, not pbpaste, which goes the other way (dumps the clipboard to stdout). – Washtub

Answer 2

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.

Writein

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. – Deepfreeze

@Deepfreeze - I know. But I gave him another option to get where I thought he needed to go which is a copy paste. Helped someone! – Writein

OMG, can't believe it has to be controlled this insane way. – Collum

Answer 3

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:

1. screen -c path/to/screen/config.rc
2. Hit Ctrl+A then Esc to enter copy mode.
3. Scroll up the text buffer and find the spot you want to leave your start marker for copying, then hit space.
4. Scroll down and select the text you wish to copy. When you are done, hit space again.
5. 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"'

Ear

Is there a similar method for this in Debian? Love the simplicity. – Gravitate

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? – Talipes

the same can be done in debian by using clipit. sh -c "/tmp/screen-exchange | clipit" – Frons

On ubuntu 18.04.4 I had to change /bid/clipit to /usr/bin/cliptit and i had to install libcanberra-gtk-module. – Joashus

This wasn't obvious to me when I first read it. But the big difference here is that this solution will copy the text to your clipboard, not just screen's copy buffer. Allowing you to paste in any application, not just ones running inside your screen session/terminal – Renettarenew

What worked for me (Ubuntu 22.04) bindkey -m ' ' eval 'stuff \040' 'writebuf' 'exec sh -c "/bin/cat /tmp/screen-exchange | DISPLAY=:0 xsel -ib"' – Gordy

Answer 4

Since nobody seems to have directly answered the question:

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

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

ta-da!

Critter

This is amazing! How did you figure it out? – Notochord

@Notochord skillz bro – Critter

Answer 5

This answer applies to OS X.

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

1. In any of your screen windows, type pbcopy <enter>.
2. Then paste your text into the terminal using the GNU Screen paste command (Ctrl-a ] unless you've changed your escape key).
3. If the text does not end in a newline, press <enter> to insert one.
4. 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.

Eclogite

Answer 6

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.

Ignite

Answer 7

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

Setup:

1. 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)
2. 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"'

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

How To Use:

1. Enter copy mode with CTRL+a [
2. Move around with vim style key movement or arrow keys
3. Start selecting text by hitting space
4. 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

Hizar

Answer 8

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

Hepner

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! – Sparid

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. – Hepner

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. – Subsumption

Answer 9

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/

Ending

I think your solution is not a screen feature, but something related to X. what you need are the copy-paste tools explained here: gnu.org/software/screen/manual/screen.html#Paste – Mirilla