Copy remote(ssh) text to local clipboard (like macOS pbcopy).

README.md

pbcopy

Copy text to your local clipboard over SSH, just like macOS's built-in pbcopy.

echo "hello" | pbcopy
cat file.txt | pbcopy
pbcopy "some text"

Requirements

• Local terminal that supports OSC 52: iTerm2, Alacritty, Kitty, WezTerm
• tmux (optional): version 2.6+, with the following line in ~/.tmux.conf:

  set -g allow-passthrough on
  

Installation

Download the script and place it in ~/.local/bin/:

curl -o ~/.local/bin/pbcopy https://gist.githubusercontent.com/SmileMachine/d8e9978c50f38173a0bda4fbe55a1783/raw/pbcopy
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/pbcopy

Make sure ~/.local/bin is in your PATH. If not, add this to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Notes

• Uses the OSC 52 terminal escape sequence. The sequence travels back through SSH and is interpreted by your local terminal, which writes the content to the clipboard.
• Inside tmux, the sequence is wrapped in a DCS passthrough so tmux forwards it to the outer terminal instead of consuming it.
• Very large inputs may be silently truncated depending on your terminal (~1 MB).

pbcopy

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# pbcopy - Copy text to your local clipboard over SSH
# https://gist.github.com/SmileMachine/d8e9978c50f38173a0bda4fbe55a1783

_b64() { base64 -w0 2>/dev/null || base64 | tr -d '\n'; }

if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
    data=$(printf '%s' "$*" | _b64)
else
    data=$(_b64)
fi

if [[ -n "$TMUX" ]]; then
    printf '\ePtmux;\e\e]52;c;%s\007\e\\' "$data" > /dev/tty
else
    printf '\e]52;c;%s\007' "$data" > /dev/tty
fi