clipboard

Perform copy and paste operations on the system clipboard.

Process: Main, Renderer

The following example shows how to write a string to the clipboard:

const {clipboard} = require('electron')
clipboard.writeText('Example String')

On X Window systems, there is also a selection clipboard. To manipulate it you need to pass selection to each method:

const {clipboard} = require('electron')
clipboard.writeText('Example String', 'selection')
console.log(clipboard.readText('selection'))

Methods

The clipboard module has the following methods:

Note: Experimental APIs are marked as such and could be removed in future.

clipboard.readText([type])

• type String (optional)

Returns String - The content in the clipboard as plain text.

clipboard.writeText(text[, type])

• text String
• type String (optional)

Writes the text into the clipboard as plain text.

clipboard.readHTML([type])

• type String (optional)

Returns String - The content in the clipboard as markup.

clipboard.writeHTML(markup[, type])

• markup String
• type String (optional)

Writes markup to the clipboard.

clipboard.readImage([type])

• type String (optional)

Returns NativeImage - The image content in the clipboard.

clipboard.writeImage(image[, type])

• image NativeImage
• type String (optional)

Writes image to the clipboard.

clipboard.readRTF([type])

• type String (optional)

Returns String - The content in the clipboard as RTF.

clipboard.writeRTF(text[, type])

• text String
• type String (optional)

Writes the text into the clipboard in RTF.

clipboard.readBookmark() macOS Windows

Returns Object:

• title String
• url String

Returns an Object containing title and url keys representing the bookmark in the clipboard. The title and url values will be empty strings when the bookmark is unavailable.

clipboard.writeBookmark(title, url[, type]) macOS Windows

• title String
• url String
• type String (optional)

Writes the title and url into the clipboard as a bookmark.

Note: Most apps on Windows don’t support pasting bookmarks into them so you can use clipboard.write to write both a bookmark and fallback text to the clipboard.

clipboard.write({
  text: 'https://electron.atom.io',
  bookmark: 'Electron Homepage'
})

clipboard.readFindText() macOS

Returns String - The text on the find pasteboard. This method uses synchronous IPC when called from the renderer process. The cached value is reread from the find pasteboard whenever the application is activated.

clipboard.writeFindText(text) macOS

• text String

Writes the text into the find pasteboard as plain text. This method uses synchronous IPC when called from the renderer process.

clipboard.clear([type])

• type String (optional)

Clears the clipboard content.

clipboard.availableFormats([type])

• type String (optional)

Returns String[] - An array of supported formats for the clipboard type.

clipboard.has(format[, type]) Experimental

• format String
• type String (optional)

Returns Boolean - Whether the clipboard supports the specified format.

const {clipboard} = require('electron')
console.log(clipboard.has('<p>selection</p>'))

clipboard.read(format) Experimental

• format String

Returns String - Reads format type from the clipboard.

clipboard.readBuffer(format) Experimental

• format String

Returns Buffer - Reads format type from the clipboard.

clipboard.writeBuffer(format, buffer[, type]) Experimental

• format String
• buffer Buffer
• type String (optional)

Writes the buffer into the clipboard as format.

clipboard.write(data[, type])

• data Object
  • text String (optional)
  • html String (optional)
  • image NativeImage (optional)
  • rtf String (optional)
  • bookmark String (optional) - The title of the url at text.
• type String (optional)

const {clipboard} = require('electron')
clipboard.write({text: 'test', html: '<b>test</b>'})

Writes data to the clipboard.