manage-tabs-and-items

name	manage-tabs-and-items
description	Create, rename, reorder, and remove CopyQ tabs; move or copy items between tabs; deduplicate; pin items; and clear history selectively. Use when organising clipboard history into named buckets (Links, Snippets, Code, etc.) or doing bulk cleanup.

Tabs & Items

CopyQ organises clipboard history into tabs. The default tab is &clipboard. Additional tabs are user-created and persist across restarts.

Tab operations

copyq tab                        # list tabs
copyq addTab "Links"
copyq addTab "Snippets"
copyq renameTab "Old" "New"
copyq removeTab "Links"          # confirms via GUI; use eval to bypass

Bypass GUI confirmation when scripting:

copyq eval -- 'removeTab("Links")'

Switching default target tab for subsequent commands

Every CLI subcommand can be prefixed with tab NAME:

copyq tab "Snippets" add "my snippet"
copyq tab "Snippets" count
copyq tab "Snippets" read 0

Inside scripting:

tab('Snippets');                 // changes the *current* tab for this script
add('item');

Add items

copyq add "single item"
copyq add "item 1" "item 2" "item 3"      # appends to top
copyq tab "Notes" add "scoped to Notes"

# Add with explicit MIME (e.g. HTML)
copyq write 0 text/html "<b>bold</b>" text/plain "bold"

Move / copy between tabs

No native "move" subcommand — script it:

# Move row 5 from current tab to "Archive"
copyq eval -- '
    var item = getItem(5);
    tab("Archive");
    var n = count();
    setItem(n, item);            // append to Archive
    tab("");                     // back to default
    remove(5);
'

For copy (don't remove from source):

copyq eval -- '
    var item = getItem(0);
    tab("Snippets");
    setItem(count(), item);
'

Remove items

copyq remove 0                   # top item
copyq remove 0 1 2               # multiple rows
copyq eval -- '
    // Remove rows matching a regex
    for (var i = count() - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
        if (str(read(i)).match(/^DRAFT:/)) remove(i);
    }
'

Iterate descending when removing — removing row N shifts higher rows down by one.

Clear a tab

copyq eval -- '
    while (count() > 0) remove(0);
'

Or clear all tabs:

copyq eval -- '
    var ts = tabs();
    for (var ti = 0; ti < ts.length; ti++) {
        tab(ts[ti]);
        while (count() > 0) remove(0);
    }
'

Deduplicate a tab

copyq eval -- '
    var seen = {};
    for (var i = count() - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
        var t = str(read(i));
        if (seen[t]) remove(i);
        else seen[t] = true;
    }
'

Pin an item

CopyQ supports pinning via the GUI (right-click → Pin). From script:

copyq eval -- '
    setItem(0, Object.assign(getItem(0), {"application/x-copyq-pinned": ""}));
'

Pinned items are skipped by maxitems eviction.

Reorder

copyq select 5                   # moves row 5 to top of tab (row 0)

For arbitrary moves, getItem + remove + setItem at target row.

Inspect tab structure

copyq eval -- '
    var ts = tabs();
    for (var i = 0; i < ts.length; i++) {
        tab(ts[i]);
        print(ts[i] + ": " + count() + " items\n");
    }
'