Electron Documentation1.7.8

Docs / API / clipboard

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])

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

clipboard.writeText(text[, type])

Writes the text into the clipboard as plain text.

clipboard.readHTML([type])

Returns String - The content in the clipboard as markup.

clipboard.writeHTML(markup[, type])

Writes markup to the clipboard.

clipboard.readImage([type])

Returns NativeImage - The image content in the clipboard.

clipboard.writeImage(image[, type])

Writes image to the clipboard.

clipboard.readRTF([type])

Returns String - The content in the clipboard as RTF.

clipboard.writeRTF(text[, type])

Writes the text into the clipboard in RTF.

clipboard.readBookmark() macOS Windows

Returns Object:

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

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

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

clipboard.clear([type])

Clears the clipboard content.

clipboard.availableFormats([type])

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

clipboard.has(format[, type]) Experimental

Returns Boolean - Whether the clipboard supports the specified format.

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

clipboard.read(format) Experimental

Returns String - Reads format type from the clipboard.

clipboard.readBuffer(format) Experimental

Returns Buffer - Reads format type from the clipboard.

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

Writes the buffer into the clipboard as format.

clipboard.write(data[, type])

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

Writes data to the clipboard.


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