pbcopy and pbpaste for macOS

If you spend any amount of time in the macOS Terminal, chances are you have copied and pasted text between the command line and graphical apps more times than you can count. macOS provides two small but powerful utilities, pbcopy and pbpaste, that make pasteboard access a first-class citizen of the Unix pipeline.

This post explores what they are, how they work, and how to use them effectively in everyday workflows.

Software Versions

# Date (UTC)
$ date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S +0000"
2026-01-21 09:34:50 +0000

# OS and Version
$ uname -vm
Darwin Kernel Version 23.6.0: Mon Jul 29 21:14:30 PDT 2024; root:xnu-10063.141.2~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000 arm64

$ sw_vers
ProductName:		macOS
ProductVersion:		14.6.1
BuildVersion:		23G93

# Hardware Information
$ system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | sed -n '8,10p'
      Chip: Apple M1 Max
      Total Number of Cores: 10 (8 performance and 2 efficiency)
      Memory: 32 GB

# Shell and Version
$ echo "${SHELL}"
/bin/bash

$ "${SHELL}" --version  | head -n 1
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (arm64-apple-darwin23)

# pbcopy and pbpaste are built in utilities
# see OS version info for utility version

What Are pbcopy and pbpaste?

• pbcopy reads from standard input and writes the data to the macOS system pasteboard.
• pbpaste reads data from the system pasteboard and writes it to standard output.

They act as a bridge between the Unix stdin/stdout and the macOS pasteboard.

• These utilities work with UTF-8 text by default.
• They can also handle some non-text formats (RTF, HTML) depending on how they are used, but they are most reliable for plain text.
• They integrate directly with the macOS pasteboard, so anything copied in Finder, Safari, etc., is accessible via pbpaste.

pbcopy Basic Usage

Anything sent to pbcopy via a pipe ends up on the general pasteboard, ready to paste into another app.

# Copy the contents of a file to the clipboard
pbcopy < file.txt

# Copy the contents of all files of a particular type to the clipboard
cat directory/*.txt | pbcopy

# Copy a list of files to the clipboard
ls | pbcopy

pbpaste Basic Usage

pbpaste prints whatever is currently on the clipboard.

# print pasteboard to terminal
pbpaste

# Save pasteboard to a file
pbpaste > file.txt

# Append pasteboard contents to the end of a file
pbpaste >> file.txt

Pasteboard Modification in Place

You can pipe pasteboard content through a command and back to the pasteboard to modify the contents without creating a file. The general pattern is pbpaste | command_a | command_b | pbcopy. Note that tee /dev/tty can be used to print the contents of the pasteboard while piping to the next command. It is useful if you want to print the initial or final pasteboard contents, but it can be used at any step.

# Replace pasteboard CSV commas with tabs
pbpaste | sed "s/,/\t/g" | pbcopy

# Split pasteboard contents into lines no longer than 78 characters
# Print final pasteboard contents
pbpaste | fmt -p -w 78 | tee /dev/tty | pbcopy

# Replace pasteboard contents with a base64 encoded version
pbpaste | base64 | pbcopy

Command Line Options

pbcopy and pbpaste have a command line option -pboard to specify the general, ruler, find, or font pasteboard. general is the default.

• The General pasteboard stores text.
• The Ruler pasteboard stores paragraph-level layout and ruler settings, not text.
• The Find pasteboard stores the current search string used by “Find” operations (⌘F, Find Next, Find Previous) across applications.
• The Font pasteboard stores font and text-style information, not plain text.

# Write pasteboard font to file
pbpaste -pboard font > font.bin

# Restore pasteboard font from file
pbcopy -pboard font < font.bin

pbpaste has a -Prefer option to specify whether the utility should first attempt to paste txt, rtf, or ps.

# Attempt to paste rtf into a file
pbpaste -Prefer rtf > file.rtf

Locale Awareness

They are locale aware and use the C locale if no locale is specified.

# Force locale to UTF-8 and paste to terminal
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 pbpaste

# Force locale to UTF-8 and copy file to pasteboard
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 pbcopy < file.txt

# Multi-line example
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
pbcopy < file.txt
pbpaste

Equivalent Utilities

The macOS pasteboard utilities are not unique in concept, but their exact behavior is platform-specific. Other operating systems provide similar command-line access to the system clipboard, often with different abstractions and limitations.

Linux

Linux does not have a single, universal clipboard API. Clipboard utilities depend on the windowing system in use.

X11 (Xorg)

The most common tools are:

• xclip
• xsel

These tools interact with X11 selections, most notably:

• CLIPBOARD (what users expect as “the clipboard”)
• PRIMARY (middle-click paste)

Examples using xclip:

# Copy stdin to the clipboard
echo "hello" | xclip -selection clipboard

# Paste clipboard to stdout
xclip -selection clipboard -o

With xsel:

# Copy
echo "hello" | xsel --clipboard --input

# Paste
xsel --clipboard --output

Notes:

• These tools require an active X11 session.
• Clipboard ownership is process-based. When the owning process exits, clipboard contents may be lost unless a clipboard manager is running.

Wayland

Wayland uses a different protocol. Common tools include:

• wl-copy
• wl-paste (from wl-clipboard)

# Copy
echo "hello" | wl-copy

# Paste
wl-paste

Notes:

• Wayland typically enforces stricter clipboard security.
• Clipboard access may be limited or denied in some sandboxed environments.

FreeBSD

FreeBSD itself does not define a clipboard mechanism. Clipboard utilities depend on the desktop environment.

Common options mirror Linux:

• xclip / xsel (X11)
• wl-copy / wl-paste (Wayland)

Example:

pkg install xclip
echo "hello" | xclip -selection clipboard

On FreeBSD servers without a GUI, clipboard access is usually unavailable by design.

Windows

Windows provides clipboard access via several command-line tools.

clip (Command Prompt and PowerShell)

Windows includes a built-in utility:

echo hello | clip

This copies text to the Windows clipboard.

However, clip is write-only. It cannot read from the clipboard. This mirrors pbcopy without an equivalent of pbpaste. Users often use powershell -command "Get-Clipboard" as a workaround.

PowerShell

PowerShell provides full read/write access:

# Copy
"hello" | Set-Clipboard

# Paste
Get-Clipboard

Notes:

• PowerShell clipboard commands support text and richer data types.
• Available on modern Windows systems by default.

Cross-Platform Abstractions

Some tools and environments attempt to smooth over platform differences:

• Neovim / Vim: "+y and "+p abstract clipboard access
• tmux: Can integrate with system clipboards using platform-specific helpers
• Python / Node.js libraries: Often wrap OS-specific clipboard APIs

Despite these efforts, clipboard semantics remain fundamentally OS-dependent.

Summary Table

References:

• Man Page, pbcopy
• Man Page, pbpaste