Multi-MIME Type Wayland Clipboard Utility

If you use Wayland and have ever tried to paste a screenshot into a terminal application (VS Code terminal, Claude Code, etc.) and nothing happens (or even worse, binary stuff) instead of what you expected, this tool is for you. I.e you can't paste it as an image in Discord AND as a file path in your terminal apps. You have to choose ONE format, which is annoying.

For example, if i wanna debug complicated web development, i'd usually take a screenshot and show it to my LLM CLI. But when i take the picture, i cant just paste it in the terminal. I literally have to 1) take screenshot, 2) manually save it, 3) go to my file explorer, 4) find the damn thing, 5) copy it manually (bc ctrl+c doesnt cut it for some reason), and THEN 6) paste it into the LLM CLI in the terminal. So that i fixed.

How It Works

1. Connects directly to Wayland compositor
2. Creates a clipboard data source
3. Offers 6 MIME types simultaneously
4. Serves the appropriate type when apps request clipboard content
5. Mimics GNOME Nautilus clipboard format for maximum compatibility

Fix

wl-clip-multi uses the Wayland protocol directly (via pywayland) to offer 6 MIME types simultaneously:

1. x-special/gnome-copied-files - File path (for terminals)
2. text/plain;charset=utf-8 - Plain text path
3. text/uri-list - Standard URI format
4. application/vnd.portal.filetransfer - XDG portal
5. application/vnd.portal.files - XDG portal files
6. image/png (or appropriate) - Raw content (for visual apps)

Apps then choose their preferred format when you paste.

Installation

This repo provides two tools:

• wl-clip-multi: General-purpose multi-MIME clipboard tool for any file
• screenshot-smart-clipboard: Complete screenshot solution with integrated multi-MIME clipboard (Hyprland)

1. Install Dependencies

pip install pywayland

sudo pacman -S wl-clip-persist  # Arch/Manjaro
# or
yay -S wl-clip-persist  # AUR

2. Install the tools

For general clipboard use:

git clone https://github.com/mrdrbrdr/screenshot-smart-clipboard.git
cd screenshot-smart-clipboard
sudo cp bin/wl-clip-multi /usr/local/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/wl-clip-multi

For integrated screenshot solution (Hyprland):

git clone https://github.com/mrdrbrdr/screenshot-smart-clipboard.git
cd screenshot-smart-clipboard
cp bin/screenshot-smart-clipboard ~/.local/bin/
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/screenshot-smart-clipboard

Then bind it to a keybinding in your Hyprland config:

bind = , Print, exec, ~/.local/bin/screenshot-smart-clipboard

3. Setup wl-clip-persist (Required)

Without this, your clipboard only works for a split second:

Many Wayland systems run clipboard managers (like elephant-clipboard, cliphist) that use wl-paste --watch to monitor the clipboard. When they detect our multi-MIME clipboard, they read it and re-copy it - but only preserve 1-2 MIME types, destroying 6-type clipboard.

wl-clip-persist fixes this by reading ALL MIME types and preserving them.

Add to autostart:

Hyprland

Add to ~/.config/hypr/autostart.conf:

exec-once = wl-clip-persist --clipboard regular

Sway

Add to ~/.config/sway/config:

exec wl-clip-persist --clipboard regular

GNOME (Wayland)

Create ~/.config/autostart/wl-clip-persist.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=wl-clip-persist
Exec=wl-clip-persist --clipboard regular
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

KDE Plasma (Wayland)

Create ~/.config/autostart/wl-clip-persist.sh:

#!/bin/bash
wl-clip-persist --clipboard regular

Make it executable: chmod +x ~/.config/autostart/wl-clip-persist.sh

Then start it now (or reboot):

wl-clip-persist --clipboard regular &

That's it basically.

Technical Details

See TECHNICAL.md for:

GPL-3.0

Links

• wl-clipboard issue #71 - Multi-MIME discussion
• wl-clip-persist - Essential companion tool
• pywayland - Python Wayland bindings