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laurilehmijoki/use-system-clipboard-with-vim.md

Last active August 29, 2015 13:56
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Use system clipboard with VIM
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use-system-clipboard-with-vim.md

Problem

The "integrate VIM with the system clipboard" feature does not work on OS X 10.8+ and VIM 7.3.

Solution

  • Compile VIM from source
  • Enable the system-clipboard integartion in .vimrc

Compile VIM

hg clone https://vim.googlecode.com/hg/ vim # get Mercurial: http://mercurial.selenic.com
sudo mkdir -p /opt/local/bin # Do not override the system VIM
cd vim
./configure --prefix=/opt/local --with-features=huge
make
src/vim # Try out the VIM that we just compiled
sudo make install # Install to /opt/local

Ensure that the dir /opt/local/bin is in your $PATH.

Integrate with system clipboard

Add the following setting into your .vimrc.

set clipboard+=unnamed " Always yank/delete to system clipboard

Done!

Restart VIM. Try yanking any selection in VIM and then pasting the selection into another window, e.g. TextEdit. It should work.

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