How to Copy to Clipboard From Terminal

Installation

Ubuntu/Debian:

$ sudo apt install xclip

NixOS:

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  xclip
];

Add this to your shell config:

alias clip="xclip -sel clip <"

Now you can copy any file’s contents directly to your clipboard:

$ clip myfile.txt

This grabs the contents of myfile.txt and puts them in your system clipboard, ready for pasting anywhere.

I configure this in my NixOS setup by doing something like this:

{
  programs.zsh = {
    enable = true;
    
    // ...
    
    shellAliases ={
      clip = "xclip -sel clip <";
    };
};