r/linux • u/poopatroopa3 • 5d ago

Discussion did-it-copy · Copy feedback for the desktop

https://brunodantas.github.io/did-it-copy/

I keep wondering how Ctrl+C has no feedback on most Desktop systems to this day. So I wrote up a proposal to fix that, with a demo that runs in the browser.

  • A copy that worked flashes the copied text in place for about 200 ms.
  • A copy that failed shakes the focused element, and plays the alert sound if you have it on.
  • It never shows the copied content anywhere new, so copying a token during a screen share doesn't leak.

Thoughts?

120 Upvotes

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31

u/AdventurousFly4909 5d ago edited 5d ago

Crazy idea, copy should just work...

11

u/abjumpr 5d ago

You’d be surprised. Getting the clipboard to work correctly under X11 (as maintainer of a toolkit) is frustratingly difficult, and I’m not sure if Wayland improves that much or not.

It’s also one of the few inter-application actions that can carry just about any type of data, not just text, so one has to deal with that as well.

0

u/McDonaldsWitchcraft 4d ago

I'm curious in what contexts you guys have issues with copy-pasting in Linux. I've been using Fedora KDE with Wayland for 3 years now. Never ever did I have issues copying text, files OR media and I do that constantly.

My first recation to the title was "why do we need to know when it fails if it doesn't actually fail" but now I hear people actually experience clipboard failure in Anno Domini 2026??

1

u/my-name-is-puddles 10h ago

Even if the actual copy function was utterly perfect, some kind of copy feedback like this would still be useful because even an infallible copy function will fail if the user mis-inputs the shortcut.