Copying text outside of Vim with set mouse=a enabled

Question

After enabling set mouse=a, text copied inside of Vim will not paste outside of Vim. Is there a way to fix this?

Here, selecting text with the mouse turns on visual mode and disables the Copy option in the popup menu:

Answer 1

Hold down Shift and then click the right mouse button.

Answer 2

Compilation settings that Vim was compiled with, are part of the issue. vim --version shows these.

In OS X, the default Vim has -clipboard. But you need +clipboard.

On OS X, you can and apparently generally should, use MacVim. You can do brew cask install macvim. That one has +clipboard.

Them you'll have two Vim installations.

~$ ls -l /usr/bin/vim   <--- default vim
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  1745984 15 Jul  2017 /usr/bin/vim

~$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/vim   <-- macvim, installed recently via that mentioned brew line.
lrwxr-xr-x  1 apple  admin  42 16 May 23:32 /usr/local/bin/vim -> /Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/bin/mvim

Running Vim will run MacVim, because /usr/local/bin should be before /usr/bin in the path, though you can check with which vim.

Running Vim (to run MacVim), is fine, but you may want to map vi to MacVim, because otherwise running vi stays at the default Vim! You can rewrite or delete (with rm) and recreate the vi symbolic link, with ln. And to do that without an 'operation not permitted" error, you have to (temporarily) disable SIL. How do I disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) AKA "rootless" on macOS?.

MacVim has +clipboard as shown by vim --version.

Here is a working ~/.vim/vimrc with just the required lines.

:set mouse=a
:map <leader>c "+y
:map <leader>v "+p

The default leader key is backslash.

I read a suggestion that one should use the leader key... (certainly control has many keys already in use, so the suggestion was to not use control. I don't know if that applies to command key too, but anyhow).

With that mentioned mapping, \c will do "+y which will copy from the register known as +, to the clipboard. And \v will paste from the register known as +.

So that's a copy/paste that works between windows.

Another OS may require "* rather than "+.

Answer 3

Set set mouse=a in vi, using MobaXterm, after installing vim-gtk3 on the server, dragging with mouse and Ctrl + Insert works, but seems it only work with MobaXterm.

After installing vim-gtk3, vi will link to it:

sudo apt install gvim

Output:

[sudo] password for lala:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Package gvim is a virtual package provided by:
  vim-gtk3 2:8.2.2434-3ubuntu3.2
  vim-athena 2:8.2.2434-3ubuntu3.2
You should explicitly select one to install.

E: Package 'gvim' has no installation candidate

And:

which vi

Output:

/usr/bin/vi

And:

file /usr/bin/vi

Output:

/usr/bin/vi: symbolic link to /etc/alternatives/vi

And:

file /etc/alternatives/vi

Output:

/etc/alternatives/vi: symbolic link to /usr/bin/vim.gtk3

Answer 4

A good workaround which is worth adding:

The GPM daemon can be used which is a cut and paste utility and mouse server for virtual consoles. It will provide functionalities across all the virtual consoles!

Copy-paste actions can be done by Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V.

sudo apt-get install gpm

Man pages of GPM

Answer 5

You can use :set mouse& in the Vim command line to enable copy/paste of text selected using the mouse. You can then simply use the middle mouse button or Shift + Insert to paste it.

Answer 6

On OS X, use Fn instead of Shift.

Answer 7

Instead of set mouse=a, use set mouse=r in .vimrc.

Answer 8

Another OS X-Mac option is to uncheck menu View → Allow Mouse Reporting (or press ⌘ + R to toggle it). This allows you to toggle between mouse interaction and mouse selecting, which might be useful when selecting and copy/pasting a few bits, because you don't have to hold a modifier key to do it.

Note for Multiline with line numbers:

I usually have line numbers enabled, so this will also copy the line numbers if you select multiple lines. If you want to copy multiple lines without the line numbers, disable the numbers with :set nonu and then you can :set nu to re-enable them after you're done copying.

Answer 9

In ESC mode, when set mouse=a, select the text using the mouse. This would enable the visual mode in Vim. Then you can press Y to yank the selected text and P to paste it wherever you want. This happens only within Vim.

Answer 10

If you are using a PuTTY session, then it automatically copies the selection. If we have used "set mouse=a" option in Vim, selecting using Shift + Mouse drag selects the text automatically. One needs to check in X-term.

Answer 11

In Ubuntu, it is possible to use the X-Term copy & paste bindings inside VIM (Ctrl + Shift + C and Ctrl + Shift + V) on text that has been highlighted using the Shift key.

Answer 12

Press Shift while selecting with the mouse. This will make mouse selection behave as if mouse=a was not enabled.

Note: this trick also applies to "middle button paste": if you want to paste in Vim text that was selected outside, press Shift while clicking the middle button. Just make sure that insert mode is activated when you do that (you may also want to :set paste to avoid unexpected effects).

OS X (Mac): hold Alt/Option while selecting (source)

Answer 13

Use ", +, y after making a visual selection either with the keyboard or the mouse. You shouldn’t be using the terminal’s copy command anyway, because that copies what the terminal sees instead of the actual content. Here is what this does:

• ",+ tells Vim to use the register named + for the next delete, yank or put. The register named + is a special register, it is the X11 clipboard register. (On other systems, you would use * instead, I think, see :help clipboard and :help x11-selection)
• y is the yank command, which tells Vim to put the selection in the register named previously.

You could map it like this:

:vmap <C-C> "+y

And then highlight something with the mouse and press Control-C to copy it.

This feature only works when Vim has been compiled with the +xterm_clipboard option. Run vim --version to find out if it has.

Answer 14

Also worth mentioning, by having set mouse=nvi, when doing a selection and then pressing : <ESC> you will get the mouse selection copied to the primary selection clipboard (equivalent to a "*y).

Reference: help mouse

Main advantage of this method is the fact that if you have multiple vertical splits, it will only select from the current buffer. Using <Shift> as mentioned in the main answer, will, in this case, copy from all 3 files at the same time which is not exactly what one would want, expect or need.

Answer 15

Add set clipboard=unnamed to your .vimrc. So it will use the clipboard register '*' instead of the unnamed register for all yank, delete, change and put operations (note it does not only affect the mouse).

The behavior of register '*' depends on your platform and how your vim has been compiled (or if you use neovim).

If it does not work, you can try with set clipboard=unnamedplus, but this option only makes sense on X11 systems (and gvim therefore).

Answer 16

I accidently explained how to switch off set mouse=a, when I reread the question and found out that the OP did not want to switch it off in the first place. Anyway for anyone searching how to switch off the mouse (set mouse=) centrally, I leave a reference to my answer here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/506723/194822