This guide assumes you know the basics of Vim.
If you’re on Linux I assume you use X11. That doesn’t mean the guide will not work on Wayland.
For now this guide is for Vim only, not Neovim.
Even though the usage is the same, the inner workings are quite different.
The good news is that in Neovim there shouldn’t be a need to set anything up
as far as I know, so you can skip to The + register.
In Vim native clipboard support is optionally included at compile time — you may not have it.
Test if it already works: click (gasp!) on some word, press "+yiw
(yes, that’s a double quote, then plus and then yiw)
and try to paste in another program.
If it worked skip to The + register.
If you’re working over SSH,
learn to use clipboard support locally first,
then see Copying/pasting over SSH.
To see if your Vim has clipboard support compiled-in type
:echo has('clipboard')
if it outputs 1, clipboard support is enabled,
if 0 — then not.
A less convenient but easier to remember command is :version.
It outputs all the optional features along with an indicator:
+ or - that they are enabled. Look for +clipboard.
If you’re using Windows Subsystem for Linux also ensure it has X11 support.
On Linux distributions there are usually multiple Vim packages provided:
some minimal, some more feature-rich. See :h W24.
For example, on Arch Linux there are vim and gvim packages.
The second not only includes the GUI version of Vim,
but a more feature-rich TUI.
One that includes clipboard support.
On the off chance there is no such “big” version of Vim available
you can compile it yourself.
Look at the src/INSTALL file in the Vim repository.
Use this flag on the configuration step:
./configure --with-features=huge
+ registerIn Vim you can keep more than 26 pieces of text in memory at the same time. They are kept in registers.
For operators such as yank, delete and paste
you can optionally specify a register by prefixing it with a double quote
and a one-character name of the register.
For example, "ryy will yank the current line into the r register.
Afterwards you can paste it with "rp.
Apart from the 26 letter registers there are some special ones.
If you don’t specify a register the default register is used.
You can also access it with the " name, for example, ""yiw.
This will work exactly the same as yiw by default.
However the " register is still useful to paste in Insert mode with <c-r>".
The default register is always populated,
even if you specify another register.
Registers related to clipboard are * and +.
On Mac and Windows those are the same.
On Linux * and + correspond to PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD selections.
For example, select some text with a mouse in a browser,
go to Vim and use "*p to paste it.
Or, use Visual mode to select some text in Vim, press "+y,
go to another program and paste it with CTRL+V.
Here are some ways to make working with system clipboard more smooth.
There is the ‘clipboard’ option.
If you set it to unnamed,
whenever you don’t specify a register the * register is going to be used.
If you set it to unnamedplus, the + register is used.
Note that the system clipboard is then overwritten whenever you delete something.
set clipboard^=unnamedplus
Another common approach is to utilize mappings. You can put this line into your .vimrc file and see if you like it.
nnoremap <space>p "+
Whenever you want to paste some text from another program press <space>pp.
Whenever you want to copy text from Vim you can do something like <space>pyG
to copy text from cursor position up to the end of the file.
To make native clipboard support work over SSH on Linux you need to enable X11 forwarding.
Alternative solutions:
rsync your filesYou can treat Vim like any other terminal program without built-in clipboard support.
Use middle-click or CTRL+SHIFT+V for pasting into Vim (or whatever your terminal’s paste binding is). Hold SHIFT and select text with a mouse for a modeless-selection, then press CTRL+SHIFT+C (or whatever your terminal’s copy binding is).
Another common way is using a “copy mode” of a screen multiplexer like tmux.
:set paste before pasting and :set nopaste afterwards.
See vim-unimpaired’s yop for a solution.Vim has multiple ways of interacting with CLI programs.
Linux examples (see How to Copy Text in Vim for other systems):
To copy selected (in Visual mode) lines type this
('<,'> will be entered automatically):
:'<,'>w !xclip -selection clipboard
To paste from the clipboard to a line below, type this:
:r !xclip -o -selection clipboard