Introduction

My daily workflow involves connecting over SSH and using Neovim, but I struggled with clipboard integration. I wanted a way to copy text inside Neovim and sync it with my local clipboard seamlessly.

However, copying and pasting between remote and local machines isn’t always straightforward. Thankfully, OSC52 (Operating System Command 52) came to the rescue!

In this post, I’ll introduce my copy script that leverages OSC52, explain how OSC52 works, and show how to integrate it into Neovim for a smooth experience.

What is OSC52?

OSC52 is a terminal escape sequence that allows you to copy text to your system clipboard from a remote session. It works by encoding the copied text in Base64 and sending it through a special terminal command, which supported terminal emulators (such as Alacritty, Ghostty, Kitty, WezTerm) detect and copy to your local clipboard.

This means that even when working on a remote machine over SSH, you can copy text directly to your local clipboard without needing tools like xclip, wl-copy, or xsel.

The Copy and Paste Scripts

To make clipboard management effortless, I created two simple scripts: copy and paste. You can find them in my .dotfiles repository.

Copy Script

The copy script encodes the input in Base64 and sends it using OSC52. Here’s a simplified working version:

#!/bin/sh

printf '\033]52;c;%s\a' "$(cat | base64 | tr -d '\n')"

Usage:

echo "Hello, clipboard!" | copy

This sends “Hello, clipboard!” to your system clipboard, even over SSH! 😊!

Paste Script

I also attempted to create a paste script, but due to terminal limitations, I could only prompt for input when executing the paste script.

Example use case:

❯ echo "$(paste)" | grep "42"
📋 Enter input and press Enter (Ctrl+D to finish):
We can insert text, or paste, in a
multi-line format, and it will be print to stdout.
42 and when we want to exit, we just do
Ctrl+D
✅ Echoing the input to stdout!
42 and when we want to exit, we just do

Integrating OSC52 with Neovim

To enable seamless copying inside Neovim, we need to:

  1. Set the clipboard to unnamedplus
  2. Use an autocommand to copy text using OSC52 whenever we yank (yy, d, x, etc.)

Configuration for Neovim

Add the following to your init.lua or equivalent configuration file:

vim.o.clipboard = "unnamedplus"

vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd("TextYankPost", {
  callback = function()
    vim.highlight.on_yank()
    local copy_to_unnamedplus = require("vim.ui.clipboard.osc52").copy("+")
    copy_to_unnamedplus(vim.v.event.regcontents)
    local copy_to_unnamed = require("vim.ui.clipboard.osc52").copy("*")
    copy_to_unnamed(vim.v.event.regcontents)
  end,
})

Explanation

  • vim.o.clipboard = "unnamedplus" ensures that Neovim’s default clipboard operations work with the system clipboard.
  • TextYankPost event triggers whenever you copy (yank) text in Neovim.
  • vim.highlight.on_yank() provides a visual cue that text was copied.
  • vim.ui.clipboard.osc52.copy("+") and vim.ui.clipboard.osc52.copy("*") copy the yanked text to both + (system clipboard) and * (primary selection).

With this setup, anything you yank inside Neovim is automatically available in your system clipboard, even over SSH!

Conclusion

These simple scripts and Neovim integration massively improved my workflow, allowing seamless clipboard access over SSH.

I hope they help you as well! 😊 Give them a try, and let me know how they work for you. 🚀