How to paste to Emacs from clipboard on OSX?

Question

This might be extraordinarily simple, but I am playing with Emacs (22.1.1) and I can\'t get it to paste text in the clipboard using Control-Y.

Answer 1

See http://blog.binchen.org/?p=589

Here is code:

(require 'simpleclip)
(defun copy-to-clipboard ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((thing (if (region-active-p)
                   (buffer-substring-no-properties (region-beginning) (region-end))
                 (thing-at-point 'symbol))))
    (simpleclip-set-contents thing)
    (message "thing => clipboard!")))

(defun paste-from-clipboard()
  "Paste string clipboard"
  (interactive)
  (insert (simpleclip-get-contents)))

The code use simpleclip (https://github.com/rolandwalker/simpleclip)

Simpleclip requires you install some command line tool on Mac/Linux/Cygwin which . So even emacs without graphic support could also access clipboard.

This solution works on any version of Emacs, any OS. It also works when your remote ssh if the server enables X forward, the complete command is ssh -X -C -c blowfish-cbc,arcfour name@host.com)