AlexSelimov.com/content/posts/mac_style_copy_paste.md

+++
title = "Mac style copy/paste on Void Linux"
date = "2025-09-05T23:49:40-04:00"
topics = ["software development", "linux", "configurations"]
+++

{{< callout >}}
First version of this post was generated with LLMs before manual revision. See [this link](/posts/ai_confession/) for more details.
{{< /callout >}}

Another quick post that may be useful to somebody else.
I've been working at UKG for about 4 months now. 
In my work I use a Mac laptop. 
I've tried my best to unify my configurations between my personal Linux system and the Mac dev machine provided by UKG to reduce headaches when having to switch from professional to personal projects.
This even went as far as trying to configure OpenBox to be more like the MacOS desktop environment (HA a big failed endeavour).
While I ultimately found peace with differences in desktop environments, there was another thing I found very hard to deal with.

## Differences in Keybindings!!

I made a lot of changes and compromises when setting up my Mac system and configuring my personal machine.
One notable change was swapping my main modkey for `dwm` from `Meta` to `Alt` to better mimic the Mac setup. 
I tried doing the reverse of swapping `Option` and `Cmd` in Mac, but that was a really rough time.
I've also tried to keep many other keybindings, associated with things like moving windows or changing workspaces, consistent.
One thing that was causing endless headaches was copy and paste.
I don't know the exact count of times I've pressed `Alt+C` or `Alt+V` at home in vain, but it is certainly significant.
As a result I spent some time to figure out how to do this.

## Final Solution

I configure my `dwm` specific keybindings in my `config.h`, but for everything else I use `sxhkd`. 
This allows me to more easily reload keybindings instead of having to cycle `dwm` and lose all of my window placements.
I highly recommend this kind of setup. 
My final solution, added to my `sxhkdrc` is:

```

alt + c   
     xclip -selection primary -o | xclip -selection clipboard -i
 alt + v    
     sh -c 'xclip -selection clipboard -o | xclip -selection primary -i && xdotool click 2'
```


I tried several other ways, most notable being just trying to send `Ctrl+C` when I pressed `Alt+C`, but nothing else worked.

## How it works

A quick description of how it works:

- `Alt+C` takes the primary selection and copies it to the clipboard
- `Alt+V` takes the clipboard and copies it to the primary selection and then emulates a middle mouse button click to paste.

I was hoping for a more elegant solution but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯