Tmux copy to wayland

21st Sep 2023 tmux wayland copy

There are so many guides for copying to the clipboard from tmux to X11 and using the VI mode of tmux. I personally prefer to use the default mode with the default shortcuts. As such, I have looked and learned about using tmux list-keys which shows you existing short cuts to make my own to store in ~/.tmux.conf. To overwrite the default shortcuts:

set-option -s set-clipboard off
bind P paste-buffer
bind-key    -T copy-mode    C-w                  send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel               wl-copy
bind-key    -T copy-mode    C-k                  send-keys -X copy-pipe-end-of-line-and-cancel   wl-copy

You can replace the wl-copy command with xsel or xclip if you want to use it with X11, you can even make a custom command to copy over ssh.

With this, you can ctl-b [ to enter copy mode, and use keyboard/mouse to move the cursor. Once the cursor is at the starting point, you can use ctl-space to start selection or ctl-k to copy to end of line. If you get a selection, use ctl-w to copy. The P bind is for pasting the buffer using ctl-b P.

I hope this helps someone.