In my daily work, I usually log into a remote server via a terminal emulator and do my development work there. Sometimes, I need to copy text from remote server to my local machine’s clipboard. Previously, I use mouse to select and copy the text, which I find to be quite cumbersome.

What is OSC 52

Recently, I have found out the OSC 52 terminal sequence¹, which is really useful when we want to copy text from remote to local clipboard.

We can use OSC 52 sequence to tell terminal emulator that we want to put some text into the clipboard of local machine. The actual text is base64 encoded. If the terminal emulator supports it, then it can decode the text and put it into the system clipboard.

Set up OSC 52 support in Mintty terminal

On Windows, mintty terminal as old as version 2.6.1 supports this feature. Mintty config is in directory C: \Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\mintty, and the name is config. Open the file and add the following option:

AllowSetSelection=yes

Restart mintty and this feature will take effect. To verify, log into the remote server using mintty terminal, and run the following command:

printf "\033]52;c;$(printf "%s" "hello" | base64)\a"

Now your local clipboard content should become “hello”.

Enable OSC 52 support in ZOC terminal

ZOC terminal has added support for OSC-52 terminal sequence in version 8.01.0, as indicated by its change log.

To enable this feature, go to Options --> Edit Session Profile, in the Advanced section, we need to activate the following option:

Activate control sequences that enable remote hosts to execute commands locally.

Currently, osc-52 in ZOC only works for pure ASCII characters and does not work for non-ASCII characters. The dev said that it will be fixed in the next release.

Enable OSC 52 in iterm2

Open preferences, and go to General settings. Turn on the option Applications in terminal may access clipboard. It’s off by default for security reasons.

Copy text inside Neovim to local clipboard

With terminal’s support for OSC 52, we can copy text from Neovim to our local clipboard directly.

Install vim-oscyank:

Plug 'ojroques/vim-oscyank'

Select a text region and use command OSCYank to copy the text to your local clipboard.

References

• https://medium.com/free-code-camp/tmux-in-practice-integration-with-system-clipboard-bcd72c62ff7b
• https://mintty.github.io/mintty.1.html#CONFIGURATION
• https://github.com/mintty/mintty/issues/258#issuecomment-246123745
• OSC 52 support in iterm2: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/6842
• https://chromium.googlesource.com/apps/libapps/+/master/hterm/etc/osc52.vim