clipboard-inspect

name	clipboard-inspect
description	Read the current clipboard, the X11 PRIMARY selection, or any item from CopyQ history — by row, by MIME type, or filtered by regex. Use when the user wants to inspect what's on the clipboard, dump history to a file, or pipe clipboard contents into another tool.

Inspect Clipboard & History

Current clipboard

copyq clipboard                  # text/plain (default)
copyq clipboard text/html        # HTML representation
copyq clipboard text/uri-list    # file URIs (when files are copied)
copyq clipboard image/png > /tmp/clip.png   # image data

List MIME types currently on the clipboard:

copyq eval -- 'print(clipboard("?"))'

X11 PRIMARY selection (mouse-selected text)

copyq selection

Only meaningful on X11 sessions. On Wayland, PRIMARY support is patchy — verify before relying on it.

History

copyq count                      # how many items in current tab
copyq read 0                     # most recent item
copyq read 0 1 2                 # multiple
copyq separator $'\n---\n' read 0 1 2   # custom separator between items

Read from a specific tab:

copyq tab "Links" read 0

Filter / search

CopyQ doesn't expose a CLI grep, but eval makes it trivial:

# Find rows matching a regex; print row + content
copyq eval -- '
    var n = count();
    for (var i = 0; i < n; i++) {
        var t = str(read(i));
        if (t.match(/TODO/i)) print(i + ": " + t + "\n");
    }
'

Dump full history of a tab to a file

copyq eval -- '
    var n = count();
    var out = [];
    for (var i = 0; i < n; i++) out.push(str(read(i)));
    print(out.join("\n---\n"));
' > ~/clipboard-history.txt

Or dump every tab:

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

Inspect item metadata (all MIME types)

copyq eval -- '
    var item = getItem(0);
    for (var k in item) print(k + " (" + item[k].size + " bytes)\n");
'

Watch new clipboard events live

There is no copyq tail; emulate with a one-shot Automatic command that prints to stderr, or poll:

# Poll approach (cheap, fine for ad-hoc)
prev=""
while sleep 0.5; do
    cur=$(copyq clipboard 2>/dev/null)
    if [ "$cur" != "$prev" ]; then
        printf '[%s]\n%s\n---\n' "$(date +%T)" "$cur"
        prev=$cur
    fi
done

For production-quality monitoring, write an Automatic Custom Command that calls notify-send or appends to a logfile — see write-custom-command.

Common gotchas

• copyq read without a row number defaults to row 0 — easy to confuse with clipboard().
• clipboard() and read(0) can differ momentarily — the clipboard updates before CopyQ stores the new item.
• Binary MIME types (image/png, etc.) print raw bytes; redirect to a file rather than letting them hit the terminal.