electron

clipboard

Perform copy and paste operations on the system clipboard.

Process: Main, Renderer

On Linux, 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.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

clipboard.writeText('hello i am a bit of text!')

const text = clipboard.readText()
console.log(text)
// hello i am a bit of text!'

clipboard.writeText(text[, type])

Writes the text into the clipboard as plain text.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

const text = 'hello i am a bit of text!'
clipboard.writeText(text)

clipboard.readHTML([type])

Returns string - The content in the clipboard as markup.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

clipboard.writeHTML('<b>Hi</b>')
const html = clipboard.readHTML()

console.log(html)
// <meta charset='utf-8'><b>Hi</b>

clipboard.writeHTML(markup[, type])

Writes markup to the clipboard.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

clipboard.writeHTML('<b>Hi</b>')

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.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

clipboard.writeRTF('{\\rtf1\\ansi{\\fonttbl\\f0\\fswiss Helvetica;}\\f0\\pard\nThis is some {\\b bold} text.\\par\n}')

const rtf = clipboard.readRTF()
console.log(rtf)
// {\\rtf1\\ansi{\\fonttbl\\f0\\fswiss Helvetica;}\\f0\\pard\nThis is some {\\b bold} text.\\par\n}

clipboard.writeRTF(text[, type])

Writes the text into the clipboard in RTF.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

const rtf = '{\\rtf1\\ansi{\\fonttbl\\f0\\fswiss Helvetica;}\\f0\\pard\nThis is some {\\b bold} text.\\par\n}'
clipboard.writeRTF(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. The title value will always be empty on Windows.

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

Writes the title (macOS only) 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.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

clipboard.writeBookmark({
  text: 'https://electronjs.org',
  bookmark: 'Electron Homepage'
})

clipboard.readFindText() macOS

Returns string - The text on the find pasteboard, which is the pasteboard that holds information about the current state of the active application’s find panel.

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 (the pasteboard that holds information about the current state of the active application’s find panel) 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.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

const formats = clipboard.availableFormats()
console.log(formats)
// [ 'text/plain', 'text/html' ]

clipboard.has(format[, type]) Experimental

Returns boolean - Whether the clipboard supports the specified format.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

const hasFormat = clipboard.has('public/utf8-plain-text')
console.log(hasFormat)
// 'true' or 'false'

clipboard.read(format) Experimental

Returns string - Reads format type from the clipboard.

format should contain valid ASCII characters and have / separator. a/c, a/bc are valid formats while /abc, abc/, a/, /a, a are not valid.

clipboard.readBuffer(format) Experimental

Returns Buffer - Reads format type from the clipboard.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

const buffer = Buffer.from('this is binary', 'utf8')
clipboard.writeBuffer('public/utf8-plain-text', buffer)

const ret = clipboard.readBuffer('public/utf8-plain-text')

console.log(buffer.equals(out))
// true

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

Writes the buffer into the clipboard as format.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

const buffer = Buffer.from('writeBuffer', 'utf8')
clipboard.writeBuffer('public/utf8-plain-text', buffer)

clipboard.write(data[, type])

Writes data to the clipboard.

const { clipboard } = require('electron')

clipboard.write({
  text: 'test',
  html: '<b>Hi</b>',
  rtf: '{\\rtf1\\utf8 text}',
  bookmark: 'a title'
})

console.log(clipboard.readText())
// 'test'

console.log(clipboard.readHTML())
// <meta charset='utf-8'><b>Hi</b>

console.log(clipboard.readRTF())
// '{\\rtf1\\utf8 text}'

console.log(clipboard.readBookmark())
// { title: 'a title', url: 'test' }
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