# astrand/xclip

Command line interface to the X11 clipboard

Repository: https://github.com/astrand/xclip
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/xclip
Language: C
License: GPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Last push: 2025-01-09T22:05:21+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3865, "days_push": 601, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1317, forks 79 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:21.070822+00:00)

## What it is
xclip is a command line utility for reading and writing X11 selections (the clipboard) on any system with an X11 implementation. It can pipe data from stdin or files into an X selection and print selection contents to stdout for redirection.

## Use cases
- copy command output to the clipboard from the terminal
- paste clipboard contents into a file or another program
- copy text from a browser into a shell script
- transfer files between machines over an X11 connection
- copy the primary selection to the clipboard selection
- copy selected vim lines to the X selection

## When to avoid
- you are on Wayland without XWayland and need native Wayland clipboard support
- you need a graphical clipboard history manager
- you are on macOS or Windows where native clipboard tools like pbcopy or clip.exe exist

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: stable
- function: cli, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, cross-platform
- platform: cli
- tags: clipboard, x11, x-selections, c, command-line, linux

## Member repositories
- astrand/xclip (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:21.070822+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:48:12.028871+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/astrand/xclip (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:21.070822+00:00, sha a058e2dcaa9c)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.