Best Linux Clipboard Managers (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, Wayland)

The best Linux clipboard manager is usually the one built for your desktop: Klipper on KDE Plasma (it's already installed), Clipboard Indicator or GPaste on GNOME, Clipman on Xfce, and cliphist on Wayland compositors such as Sway and Hyprland. If you want one tool on every desktop, or on Linux and Windows both, use CopyQ.

Quick picks by desktop

Why Wayland changes which manager works

On X11, any program can watch the clipboard, so almost any manager works on any desktop. Wayland is stricter. A clipboard manager needs the compositor to support a data-control protocol (ext-data-control-v1, which replaces the older wlroots version) before it can see copies made in other apps.

KDE's KWin, Sway, Hyprland, COSMIC, niri and Labwc support it. GNOME's compositor, Mutter, does not. That's why GNOME clipboard managers run as GNOME Shell extensions, and why CopyQ ships its own GNOME Shell extension to monitor the clipboard there.

Linux also has two clipboards. CLIPBOARD is what Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V use. PRIMARY holds whatever you last selected, and middle-click pastes it. Wayland supports PRIMARY through a separate protocol that Mutter, KWin, Sway and Hyprland all implement. If your manager misses text you only selected, look for an option to include the selection or keep the two in sync.

KDE Plasma: Klipper

Klipper is the clipboard tool that ships with Plasma, so there's nothing to install; click the clipboard icon in the system tray to see your history. Its settings cover what most people need:

• History size, from 1 to 2,048 items.
• Whether history is kept across sessions, so it survives logging out or shutting down.
• An option to keep the clipboard and the selection in sync, so text you select can also be pasted with Ctrl+V.
• Whether to save images copied from an image editor.
• Actions: Klipper can match copied text against patterns and offer commands, such as opening a copied URL in a particular app.

GNOME: Clipboard Indicator or GPaste

Clipboard Indicator is a GNOME Shell extension that puts your history in the top bar. Its listing on extensions.gnome.org describes it as the most popular GNOME clipboard manager, with versions for GNOME 46 to 50. It handles text and images, lets you pin entries, and has a private mode that pauses history while you copy something sensitive.

GPaste is a fuller tool built for GNOME: a background daemon, a GTK 4 window, a GNOME Shell extension and a command-line client (gpaste-client). Press Ctrl+Alt+H to open the history, or Ctrl+Alt+G for the graphical tool. Its shortcuts go through the XDG desktop portal, so they behave the same on Wayland and X11. It's BSD-2-Clause licensed.

Pano, another extension you'll see recommended in older articles, is no longer maintained.

Xfce: Clipman

Clipman is a clipboard plugin for the Xfce panel. It keeps text and images after the app you copied from closes, and it lets you set the history size. Run xfce4-clipman-history to open a full history window with type-ahead search; bind it to a keyboard shortcut in Xfce's settings to use it like a popup.

It can also sync PRIMARY with CLIPBOARD, run commands on text that matches a pattern (off by default), and show a QR code for an entry.

Sway, Hyprland and other wlroots-style compositors: cliphist

On tiling Wayland compositors, the usual setup is cliphist plus wl-clipboard (wl-copy and wl-paste). cliphist stores text and images, and you pick from history with any menu program. Start the recorder once per session, for example from your compositor's config:

wl-paste --watch cliphist store

Then bind a key to open your history in a menu and copy the chosen item back:

cliphist list | wofi -S dmenu | cliphist decode | wl-copy

Swap wofi -S dmenu for rofi -dmenu, fuzzel --dmenu or dmenu if you use one of those. cliphist is GPL-3.0.

Any desktop, and Windows too: CopyQ

CopyQ is the only manager here that runs on Linux, Windows and macOS. It stores text, HTML and images in tabs you can organise and edit, and it has a command line and a scripting API for automation. It's free and GPL-3.0.

Check its Wayland notes before installing. Clipboard monitoring works natively on KDE Plasma, Sway, Hyprland and other compositors with data-control support. On GNOME it needs CopyQ's own Shell extension, which doesn't work if CopyQ runs as a Flatpak or AppImage. Global shortcuts need XDG desktop portal support.

When to choose CopyQ over other managers covers what its scripting is good for.

If you dual-boot Windows and Linux

Only one operating system runs at a time, so there's nothing to sync live between the two. What you can carry over:

• The same app. Install CopyQ on both. Use File > Export… to save tabs to a file, and File > Import… on the other side; copyq exportData FILE and copyq importData FILE do the same from a terminal. Imports add new tabs rather than overwriting existing ones.
• A file both systems can read. For a handful of snippets you reuse everywhere, a plain text file in a folder both systems can open is simpler than any manager.

Running two machines side by side is different. KDE Connect runs on Linux, Windows (Microsoft Store or installer), macOS, Android and iOS, and can share clipboard text between paired devices on the same network.

On the Windows side, most clipboard managers don't have a Linux build. Ditto and Edge Drop, for example, are Windows-only, so CopyQ is the choice if you want the same tool on both. Best open-source clipboard managers compares the Windows options.

If you use WSL instead of dual-booting

WSL 2 runs Linux inside Windows, and the Windows clipboard stays in charge. With WSLg (Windows 10 build 19044 or later, or Windows 11), you can cut and paste between Linux GUI apps and Windows apps, so a Windows clipboard manager sees those copies. In a Linux terminal, piping into clip.exe puts text on the Windows clipboard. What crosses the WSL clipboard boundary has the details.

FAQ

Does GNOME have a built-in clipboard manager?

Not as a separate app you can browse. Add history with an extension such as Clipboard Indicator, or install GPaste.

What is the best clipboard manager for Wayland?

On KDE Plasma, Klipper. On GNOME, a Shell extension. On Sway or Hyprland, cliphist with wl-clipboard. CopyQ works on most Wayland desktops with the caveats above.

Which Linux clipboard manager also works on Windows?

CopyQ. It runs on Linux, Windows and macOS, and can export tabs on one system and import them on another.

Related reading

• Best Open-Source Clipboard Managers in 2026
• CopyQ Review: When to Choose This Scriptable Clipboard Manager
• WSL Clipboard: Copy and Paste Between Linux and Windows
• Paste, Maccy & Raycast Alternatives for Windows (2026)

Sources

• ext-data-control-v1 (wayland.app) — clipboard-manager protocol and which compositors support it.
• primary-selection-unstable-v1 (wayland.app) — PRIMARY selection on Wayland and compositor support.
• Configuring Klipper (KDE documentation) — history size, persistence, selection sync, images.
• Clipboard Indicator (GNOME Extensions) and its GitHub page — supported GNOME versions, images, pinning, private mode.
• GPaste (GitHub) — components, shortcuts, licence.
• Pano (GitHub) — maintenance status.
• Clipman (Xfce documentation) — features and history window.
• cliphist (GitHub) and wl-clipboard (GitHub) — Wayland setup commands.
• CopyQ known issues and CopyQ backup — Wayland and GNOME limits, export and import.
• KDE Connect downloads — supported platforms.
• Run Linux GUI apps with WSL (Microsoft Learn) — cut and paste between Windows and Linux apps.
• clip (Microsoft Learn) — piping command output to the Windows clipboard.

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