clipboard-typer

Type clipboard contents keystroke-by-keystroke into the active window. Designed for situations where paste is blocked or unavailable — remote desktops, restricted login fields, and terminal interfaces that intercept Ctrl+V.

Features

• Global hotkey — trigger from any window (default: Ctrl+Shift+V)
• Multiple typing backends — pynput (native), ydotool, wtype, xdotool
• Automatic backend selection — detects Wayland/X11 and picks the best available backend
• System tray icon — visual active/paused state with pause/resume toggle
• Settings GUI — Qt dialog with dark theme (PySide6)
• Configurable typing speed — adjustable delay, chunk size, and start delay
• Editor indent compensation — clears auto-indent after newlines
• Systemd service — run as a user service on Linux

Installation

Arch Linux (AUR)

yay -S clipboard-typer

pip

pip install .

# With tray icon support
pip install .[tray]

Optional dependencies

Package	Purpose
pystray, Pillow	System tray icon
ydotool	Wayland typing backend (recommended)
wtype	Alternative Wayland backend
xdotool	X11 typing backend
wl-clipboard	Wayland clipboard access

Usage

# Start with defaults
clipboard-typer

# With debug logging
clipboard-typer -v

# Without tray icon
clipboard-typer --no-tray

# Custom config file
clipboard-typer --config /path/to/config.toml

Press the hotkey (Ctrl+Shift+V by default) while text is in your clipboard. After a short delay, the text is typed character-by-character into the focused window.

Systemd service

systemctl --user enable --now clipboard-typer

Configuration

Config file location: ~/.config/clipboard-typer/config.toml

start_paused = false

[hotkey]
combo = "ctrl+shift+v"

[typing]
delay_ms = 10              # ms between keystrokes
chunk_size = 0             # characters per chunk (0 = all at once)
start_delay_ms = 300       # ms before typing starts (modifier release time)
compensate_indent = false  # clear editor auto-indent after newlines

[platform]
prefer_native = true       # try pynput first, fall back to system tools

Backend selection

Platform	prefer_native=true	prefer_native=false
Windows / macOS	pynput	pynput
Wayland	ydotool → wtype → xdotool	ydotool → wtype → xdotool
X11	pynput (fallback: xdotool)	xdotool

Development

# Install dev dependencies
pip install .[dev,tray]

# Run tests
pytest

License

MIT