xsel ☆

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Description:
Command-line program for getting and setting the contents of the X selection

Type: Formula | Tracked Since: Dec 28, 2025

Links: Homepage | formulae.brew.sh

Category: System utilities

Tags: x11 clipboard cli utility selection

Install: brew install xsel

About:
Xsel is a command-line utility for interacting with the X Window System's clipboard and selection mechanisms. It allows users to capture the contents of the primary selection, clipboard, or cut buffers and output them to standard output. Conversely, it can take input from a pipe or file and set these selections, facilitating powerful shell scripting and automation.

Key Features:

Reads from and writes to X selections (primary, secondary, clipboard)
Supports X cut buffers for legacy compatibility
Handles both text and binary data
Composable via standard Unix pipes

Use Cases:

Piping selected text from a GUI application directly into a command-line tool
Scripting clipboard operations for automated workflows
Capturing X selection data for logging or processing

Alternatives:

xclip – Similar functionality, often considered a modern alternative with slightly different default behaviors.

Version History

Detected	Version	Rev	Change	Commit
Nov 20, 2024 12:39am		0	VERSION_BUMP	c7534064