Tmux Yank

Enables copying to system clipboard in Tmux. Works on Linux and OS X.

Screencast

Key bindings

• prefix + y - copies text from the command line to clipboard.
  Works with all popular shells/repls. Tested with:
  • shells: bash, zsh (with bindkey -e), tcsh
  • repls: irb, pry, node, psql, python, php -a, coffee
  • remote shells: ssh, mosh

copy mode bindings:

• y - copy selection to system clipboard
• Ctrl-y - "put" selection - equivalent to copying a selection, and pasting it to the command line
• Alt-y - performs both of the above: copy to system clipboard and put to command line

OS X requirements

• reattach-to-user-namespace
  If you don't have this already, then install: $ brew install reattach-to-user-namespace.

Linux requirements

• xclip OR xsel command
  You most likely already have one of them, but if not:
  • Debian / Ubuntu: $ sudo apt-get install xclip or $ sudo apt-get install xsel
  • Red hat / CentOS: $ yum install xclip or `$ yum install xsel``

Copy command

OS X

Copying to clipboard is done using pbcopy.

Linux

Copying to clipboard is done using xclip -selection clipboard or xsel --clipboard command by default.

If copying is different on your system, and you need the command to be i.e. xclip -selection primary or xsel -i --primary, here's how to customize:

# in .tmux.conf
set -g @yank_selection "primary"

Warning: Use full names as option ("primary", "secondary", "clipboard")

Notes

Mouse Support

When making a selection using tmux mode-mouse on or mode-mouse copy-mode, you cannot rely on the default 'release mouse after selection to copy' behavior. Instead, press y before releasing mouse.

Installation with Tmux Plugin Manager (recommended)

Add plugin to the list of TPM plugins in .tmux.conf:

set -g @tpm_plugins "          \
  tmux-plugins/tpm             \
  tmux-plugins/tmux-yank       \
"

Hit prefix + I to fetch the plugin and source it. You should now be able to use the plugin.

Manual Installation

Clone the repo:

$ git clone https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-yank ~/clone/path

Add this line to the bottom of .tmux.conf:

run-shell ~/clone/path/yank.tmux

Reload TMUX environment:

# type this in terminal
$ tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

You should now be able to use the plugin.

Other Tmux goodies

Tmux yank works well with tmux copycat and tmux-open plugins.

License

MIT