pbtail

pbtail watches system clipboard and prints text content to stdout.

Requirements

• macOS 15 or higher

Installation

swift build -c release
cp .build/release/pbtail /usr/local/bin/

Or download a prebuilt binary from https://github.com/uasi/pbtail/releases.

Usage

pbtail [options]

Output format options

• -n, --newline - Add newline if output doesn't already end with one. (default)
• -N, --newline-always - Always add newline.
• -0, --nul - Use NUL character as terminator.
• -r, --raw - No terminator.
• -j, --json - Output as JSON with {"content": string}.
• -J, --json-value - Output as JSON with {"content": string, "value": content parsed as JSON}. (value is unset if content is not valid JSON)

Output mode options

• -a, --allow-empty - Print even when clipboard has no string representation. Without this, printing is skipped.
• -d, --dedupe - Skip printing if content is identical to the last printed content.
• -i, --print-initial-value - Print the initial clipboard value on startup.
• -1, --print-and-exit - Print the clipboard value and exit immediately.

Other options

• --polling-interval <msecs> - Polling interval in milliseconds. (default: 50)

Examples

Watch clipboard and print when it changes. Stops when user hits Ctrl+C:

$ pbtail
hello world
lorem ipsum
goodbye
^C

Print current clipboard as JSON and exit:

$ pbtail -1 -j
{"content":"hello world"}

Output as JSON with initial value, allowing empty content:

$ pbtail -a -i -j
{"content":"yawn"}
{"content":"hello world"}
{"content":""}
{"content":"lorem ipsum"}
{"content":"goodbye"}
^C