this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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Then I tell you something that might either blow your mind or be useful in future (or just being fun fact):
On Linux there is the regular copy/paste clipboard, which you already know how it works. But then there is this primary clipboard called primary selection too, that is independent from normal clipboard. Text will be copied to primary selection when you select a text (in example in Firefox). Just by selection the text with the mouse is enough and it will not affect the normal clipboard. Then you can middle click the text from primary clipboard.
Read more here: https://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-2.html#s-2.6.1
It's cool, but I cannot count the amount of times I was confused by that and accidentally pasted after switching, I would be glad if it became configurable.
It's actually surprising that this is not configurable already. At least in a GUI.
The reaction that I see here explains why, I guess.
Well fuck me. That's kinda neat.
Shame it doesn't subsequently work with ctrl+v, because that would be even cooler.
Once you're used to it, you can use the two separate clipboards independently. Say you wrote a sentence like, "one two five four three", you can correct it by selecting "three", cutting with Ctrl-X, then selecting "five" (meaning it is now in the selection buffer), hitting Ctrl-V to paste "three" from the clipboard, and then finally middle-click where you need to paste the "five".
I guess one could create shortcuts to a tool like
wl-copyandwl-pasteto either copy or paste content to primary selection (or regular clipboard for that matter). So in that case a simple script could run the command and in your desktop environment you setup a shortcut to run the script.Yes its hacky, but in Linux nothing is impossible. :-) (unless it is...)
on some apps; it works with ctrl-shift-v. so ctrl-v for the clipboard, and ctrl-shift-v for the cut buffer.
In most programs, you can paste the primary selection with Shift+Insert
My god, you just blowed my mind!