vimclip

vimclip is a tiny script to spawn your favorite $EDITOR and leave what you typed in your clipboard. I like to think of it as a poor man's vim-anywhere.

Installation and Usage

Step 1: Dependencies

vimclip requires xsel to be installed on Linux systems (apt install xsel, pacman -S xsel, ...), and $EDITOR to be set to your favorite editor (probably vim).

Step 2: Integration

First copy the script to your $HOME/bin folder. Remember to mark it executable and try it out by running vimclip in a terminal.

Next you'll want to set a shortcut to automatically spawn a terminal and run vimclip. This will depend on your desktop environment and terminal of course:

Ubuntu with gnome-terminal

Open Settings > Devices > Keyboard, scroll all the way to the bottom, and hit + to add a new shortcut. Call it vimclip, set the command to gnome-terminal -- vimclip, and assign the shortcut you like.

Other terminal emulators

For KDE's konsole set the command to konsole -e vimclip. For kitty simply set it to kitty vimclip.

If you run another desktop environment with another terminal emulator I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out as well. Don't hesitate to open an issue if not.

Step 3: Profit

💸 💸 💸

Help

Damn I Lost the Clipboard Content

Don't worry, you won't have to type it all again. vimclip stores your input in a temporary file at /tmp/vimclip.XXXXXXXX (where XXX... is replaced by a random string). So if you accidentally copied something else into your clipboard before pasting your vimclip input, just go and grab the content from there.

I Want to Use Another Editor

I called it vimclip, but if your $EDITOR is emacs, nano, or any other, it should work as well.