clipboard-viewer

A terminal-based clipboard browser that treats your copy-paste buffer with the dignity it deserves. Because sometimes you need to know exactly what's lurking in there, and xclip -o just isn't ceremonious enough.

(Did it in pytnon for now.)

What It Does

• Browse clipboard, primary, and secondary X11 selections
• Navigate available MIME targets (because yes, your clipboard has opinions about data formats)
• Preview text content
• View images directly in the terminal via chafa (your ASCII art dreams, realized; although my chafa's defaulting to sixel or whatever atm)
• Vim-style navigation because some things are just correct

Installation

# Dependencies
sudo apt install xclip imagemagick chafa  # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo pacman -S xclip imagemagick chafa    # Arch
brew install xclip imagemagick chafa      # macOS (via Homebrew)

# Then just download and run (or `chmod u+x` it first)
./xclipview

Usage

Key	Action
h/l or ←/→	Switch between clipboard selections
j/k or ↑/↓	Navigate target list
Enter	View images with chafa
r	Reload current selection
q	Quit

The interface splits into a target list (left) and content preview (right). Targets with no data appear grayed out with a ? prefix—they're the clipboard equivalent of "it's complicated."

Why This Exists

Standard clipboard tools show you what you copied. This shows you how your system thinks about what you copied. Sometimes that distinction matters. Sometimes you're just procrastinating. Either way, you're covered.

Requirements

• Python 3.6+
• X11 environment (sorry, Wayland friends—patches welcome)
• A terminal that can handle basic Unicode (so, any terminal from this millennium)

License

MIT. Copy freely, paste responsibly.