Show HN: Clippy – a better pbcopy for macOS that handles files properly

34 points

a year ago

I made clippy because pbcopy can't do something I needed every day: copy files to paste into GUI apps. When you pbcopy < image.png, you get raw bytes instead of a file that Slack or email can use.

Clippy fixes this:

- clippy report.pdf → ⌘V into any app uploads the file

- curl image.png | clippy → pipes become pasteable files

- clippy *.jpg → multiple files at once

- Text files still work like pbcopy

Technical: Direct Objective-C bindings via CGo. Copies file references (like Finder), not contents. Auto-cleans temp files. No AppleScript hacks.

Install: brew install neilberkman/clippy/clippy

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