How to use the clipboard in Go?

Question

How can I copy to the clipboard, or get data from it, using Go?

I'm a bit concerned that there are no results in the documentation and Google has yielded me this result, but I want this to work cross-platform... then I found this playground snippet (from that page) but it doesn't compile (because the "unsafe" package can't be used in the playground, I get this, but it still looks platform-dependent).

So is this even possible, cross-platform?

I don't think that exists. It would have to be provided by the underlying runtime, and there is no common runtime between Go and other no-Go applications. The example you saw, uses Windows' [user32.dll](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_library_files#USER32.DLL) — theglauber, Jun 19 '13 at 18:42
It doesn't mean it can't be done, but it would require platform-aware code. — theglauber, Jun 19 '13 at 18:52

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 15 '18 at 14:38

3

Clipboard is a platform-specific thing, so you should use a third party package. For example, use go-gtk.

This will work on platforms which are supported by GTK.

edited Jun 15 '18 at 14:38

Dave C

answered Jun 19 '13 at 02:20

mattn

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 19 '13 at 00:25

1

You'll have to os.exec(..) out to the platform-specific command for copying-to/pasting-from the clipboard.

Or you could use platform-specific libraries to do this, but I'm pretty sure there's no platform agnostic way to access the clipboard.

answered Jun 19 '13 at 00:25

Mike Reedell

2 Answers2