Basic Usage
This page describes some of the basic functionality of CopyQ clipboard manager.
To start the CopyQ double-click the program icon or run command copyq.
This starts graphical interface which can be accessed from tray.
Click on the tray icon to show application window (alternatively right-click on tray icon and select "Show/Hide" or run copyq show command).
Main element in the window is list with clipboard history. By default the application stores any new clipboard content in the list. This can be temporarily disabled from "File" menu or tray menu or permanently disabled in configuration (clear "Tab for storing clipboard" in "History" config tab).
If you copy some text it will immediately show at the top of the list. Try copying few times to see how this works. You should be able to copy parts of web pages and images if you installed CopyQ with image and web support.
To assign system shortcut to quickly open and close application window:
- open Command dialog from "File" menu "Command/Global Shortcuts...",
- click "Add" button,
- select "Show/hide main window" from list and click OK,
- change "Global Shortcut" option.
You can edit text of selected items in the list by pressing F2. After editing save the text with F2.
Create new item with Ctrl+N, type some text and press F2.
Copy the selected items back to clipboard with Enter or Ctrl+C.
Move items around with Ctrl+Down and Ctrl+Up.
You can move important or special items to new tabs (see Tabs for more info).
In the list you can simply search for text by typing some text.
For example typing "Example" will hide items that don't contain "Example" text. Press Enter to copy the first found item.
To quickly copy item to clipboard you can select the item from tray menu. To display the menu either right-click on tray icon, run command copyq menu or use a custom system shortcut.
After selecting an item in tray menu and pressing enter (pressing a number key works as well) the item is copied to the clipboard.
Tabs, items, clipboard and configuration can be changed through command line interface. Run command copyq help to see complete list of commands and their description.
To add new item to tab with name "notes" run:
copyq tab notes add "This is the first note."
To print the item:
copyq tab notes read 0
Add other item:
copyq tab notes add "This is second note."
and print all items in the tab:
copyq eval -- "tab('notes'); for(i=size(); i>0; --i) print(str(read(i-1)) + '\n');"
This will print:
This is the first note.
This is second note.
Among other things that are possible with CopyQ are:
- open video player if text copied in clipboard is URL with multimedia,
- store text copied from a code editor in "code" tab,
- store URLs in different tab,
- save screenshots (print-screen),
- load all files from directory to items (create image gallery),
- replace a text in all matching items,
- run item as a Python script.