CB (Clipboard Manager)

A simple command line key/value focused clipboard manager for Linux, written in TypeScript. It is focused in storing plaintext clips from the clipboard as key/value pairs in a JSON object and easily retrieving them by they key.

Installation on Debian/Ubuntu

git clone git clone git@github.com:kvnloughead/clipboard-manager.git
cd cb
npm install
sudo apt install xsel
sudo npm install -g .
node setup.js

The setup script will prompt you to enter paths for the files where you want to store your clippings and configuration data. For more information, run node setup.js --help.

Note that this application uses clipboardy, which on Ubuntu/Debian uses xsel. Since xsel requires an X11 server, if you are connecting to the machine via SSH you will need to use the -X flag to enable X11 forwarding.

Autocompletion

For autocompletion:

cb completion >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

On OSX, use .bash_profile instead of .bashrc.

Features

• The basic usage is simple. To save the contents of your clipboard as a clip, run cb set name-of-clip. To retrieve the clip later, run cb get name-of-clip.

• Clips are stored in a JSON file in the directory of your choosing. The default directory is ~/.config/cb. I use dropbox for easy access across devices.

• The app can be configured with a JSON file. By default, configuration and logs are stored in ~/.config/cb.

• To make it easier to find and manage clips there is rather robust list command. Run cb list pattern to bring up a list of all matching clips. You can then select the desired clip and immediately run another command on it (get, set, etc.) See docs/commands/list.md for usage details.

• Support for images is included (just use the --img flag) for some commands. See TODO.md for a list of commands that don't support images.

• autocompletion for commands and clip names

• aliases for all commands

• A somewhat experimental clipboard tracker is available. Once started the process polls the clipboard every second or so and saves the current contents to a file in an array.

  • Subcommands include: start, stop, restart, status, open, list.
  • For more details, see docs/tracker.md.
  • Note that currently automatic startup isn't enabled. Moreover, before starting the tracker you would have to manually delete the PID stored in ~/.config/cb/logs/tracker.pid. This will be resolved in a later release.

Available subcommands

• get|g [key] - retrieve contents of clipboard (see docs/commands/get.md)
• set|s [key] - save contents of clipboard (see docs/commands/set.md)
• list|l [pattern] - list clips that match a pattern (see docs/commands/list.md)
• cat|c [key] - output value of clip to command line (also useful for piping)
• remove|rm [key] - remove a clip
• rename|mv [key] - rename a clip
• update|u [key] - update the value of a clip
• open|o - open the clips file in your editor of choice

Additional documentation

Inline help is available by running cb --help or cb <command> --help for any of the available subcommands.

More detailed usage notes and examples can be found in the docs directory.

Usage of scripts

The following scripts are included in package.json.

• gethelp - copies the output of cb --help to the clipboard, using xsel.
• tracker:gethelp - copies the output of cb tracker --help to the clipboard, using xsel.
• build:dev - builds with tsc. The dev build will always mark dist/bin/index.js as executable.
• build:prod - builds with tsc. The prod build only marks dist/bind/index.js as executable if no errors are emitted by tsc.
• watch - watches files and rebuilds with tsc on change.