ClipWatch is a tiny utility that simplifies copy/paste-heavy workflows.
It watches your clipboard and prints new entries to stdout as you copy them.
Use it to quickly build scripts, batch commands, or collect snippets—without constantly switching between windows or terminals.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
-i, --ignore-first |
Ignore the clipboard value present at startup. |
-q, --quiet |
Don’t print clipboard contents to stdout. |
-s, --summary |
At program exit, copy all collected clipboard entries into the clipboard. |
-t, --transform <template> |
Replace {} in the template with each clipboard entry. |
Let’s say you’re copying a bunch of YouTube URLs and want to download them all:
clipwatch -i -t "yt-dlp {}"If you copy some URLs the output will be:
yt-dlp https://youtube.com/watch?v=abc123
yt-dlp https://youtube.com/watch?v=def456
yt-dlp https://youtube.com/watch?v=ghi789
Which you can pipe that directly into your shell:
clipwatch -i -t "yt-dlp {}" | bash
No manual typing, no window switching, no madness.
Collect useful shell commands throughout your session and export them all at once:
clipwatch -s -q
# ...copy various shell snippets...
# press Ctrl+C to stopAt termination, the full history is copied into your clipboard as a single block.
- Automate your clipboard-to-terminal workflow
- Easily batch process copied content
- Turn copied text into live scripts
- Collect text snippets for notes or reuse