How to copy and paste in Vim

How do you copy and paste in Vim?

Press Esc for normal mode. Type yy to copy the current line, or press v, move to select text, and press y. Move the cursor and press p to paste after it, or P to paste before it. For the system clipboard, type "+ first, as in "+y and "+p.

yy      copy the current line (3yy copies three)
yw      copy to the start of the next word
yiw     copy the word under the cursor, wherever the cursor sits in it
y$      copy to the end of the line
yap     copy the paragraph and the blank line after it
ggyG    copy the whole file

p       paste after the cursor (below the line, for whole lines)
P       paste before the cursor (above the line, for whole lines)
gp      like p, but leave the cursor just after the pasted text
]p      like p, but match the indent of the current line

dd      cut the line (every delete is also a copy in Vim)

y takes any motion, so if you know how to move somewhere, you know how to copy to there. y} copies to the end of the paragraph, yt, copies up to the next comma, and yi" copies whatever sits inside a pair of double quotes. One small surprise: in Vim, Y copies the whole line, the same as yy. In Neovim it copies to the end of the line, because Neovim maps Y to y$ by default.

Selecting with visual mode

When the motion is hard to name, select by eye. There are three visual modes, and they all end the same way: press y to copy or d to cut.

The way you copied decides how p behaves. Text yanked with V or yy is linewise, so p drops it on a new line below. Text yanked with v or yw is characterwise, so p puts it right after the cursor, mid-line. When a paste lands in the wrong place, this is usually why.

Registers: why p sometimes pastes the wrong thing

The classic Vim moment goes like this. You yank a line, delete another line to make room, press p, and get the deleted line back. Nothing is broken. Every yank and every delete writes to the unnamed register, and p reads from it, so the delete replaced your yank.

Your yank is still there. Vim’s register docs say register 0 holds the text from the most recent yank, and deletes leave it alone. So the fix is "0p. The ones you’ll actually use:

• "" is the unnamed register, the one plain y, d and p use.
• "0 holds your last yank. Deletes don’t touch it.
• "1 to "9 hold your last nine deletes of a line or more, newest first. Smaller deletes, like a word, go to "- instead.
• "a to "z are yours to name. "ayy saves a line in a, "ap pastes it. Use the capital letter, "Ayy, to add to a register without replacing it.
• "_ is the black hole. "_dd deletes a line without touching any register.
• "+ and "* are the system clipboard, covered next.

Type :reg to see what each register holds right now. A register name goes before the command, so the same pattern works everywhere: "ayiw, "+yap, "0P.

How do you copy from Vim to the system clipboard?

Use the plus register. "+yy copies a line to the clipboard, a visual selection followed by "+y copies the selection, and "+p pastes whatever you copied in your browser. From the command line, :%y+ copies the whole file. In insert mode, Ctrl+R then + pastes the clipboard without leaving insert mode.

There are two clipboard registers because Linux has two clipboards. "+ is the normal one you paste with Ctrl+V. "* is the primary selection, the text you last highlighted, which you paste with a middle-click. Only Linux tells the two apart. The Vim docs say they are the same register on Windows, and a Mac behaves the same way. If you only learn one, learn "+.

First, check that your Vim can see the clipboard

Do this before you change any settings.

vim --version | grep clipboard

A +clipboard in the output means you’re set. A -clipboardmeans this build of Vim can’t reach the system clipboard at all, and "+y quietly falls back to the unnamed register. From inside Vim, :echo has('clipboard') gives the same answer as a 1 or a 0.

The two Vims on one Windows 11 machine show how much this varies. We checked on 20 October 2026. The Vim 9.1 that comes with Git Bash reported +clipboard, and has('clipboard_working') came back 1. The Vim 9.1 package in Ubuntu 24.04, running under WSL on the same machine, reported -clipboard.

Why clipboard support is missing, and the fix

On Linux, terminal Vim reaches the clipboard through the graphical session (X11, or Wayland in newer builds). The plain vim package on Debian and Ubuntu is built without those graphical libraries. The fix is the bigger package, which still runs in the terminal as vim:

sudo apt install vim-gtk3

Other distributions have a similar package, usually the one that also ships gVim. Installing xclip on its own does not change anything for Vim, whatever some guides say. Vim talks to the display directly, and it’s Neovim that leans on tools like xclip.

Wayland is the newer wrinkle. Vim got native Wayland clipboard support in patch 9.1.1485, according to its version notes. Distributions with an older 9.1, like Ubuntu 24.04’s 9.1.0016, predate it. If you can’t get a clipboard build, pipe through a clipboard tool. This works in any Vim:

:'<,'>w !wl-copy
:r !wl-paste

The first line copies the selected lines. Select them with V, then type : and Vim fills in the '<,'> for you. The second line pastes the clipboard below the current line. On X11, swap in xclip -selection clipboard to copy and xclip -selection clipboard -o to paste. On a Mac use pbcopy and pbpaste, and in WSL, clip.exe copies. This always sends whole lines, so for a few words the clipboard register is easier.

Making y and p use the clipboard every time

If typing "+ gets old, the clipboard option makes plain y and p use the system clipboard. Put this in your vimrc:

set clipboard^=unnamed,unnamedplus

Note the ^=. The Vim docs warn against appending with +=, because on X11 the default value ends in an exclude: pattern and anything added after it is read as part of that pattern. Several popular guides use += anyway, and on Linux that can leave the setting doing nothing. Per the option’s docs, with both values set, yanks go to both clipboards on Linux.

We think plenty of people are better off without it. With this on, every dd and every x overwrites what you copied in your browser a minute ago. Yanking with "+ on purpose keeps the two apart. And if you do turn it on, a clipboard manager like Relickeeps the earlier copies, so a stray delete doesn’t cost you the URL you meant to paste.

Neovim: the clipboard goes through a helper tool

Neovim has no built-in connection to the clipboard. It finds a helper program and runs it to copy and paste. Once it finds one, "+ and "* work exactly as in Vim. The docs list the tools it looks for, in order:

• macOS: pbcopy and pbpaste, which are always there.
• Linux on Wayland: wl-copy and wl-paste, from the wl-clipboard package.
• Linux on X11: xsel or xclip.
• Windows: win32yank first, with clip and PowerShell further down the list.
• Inside tmux, or a terminal that supports it: tmux buffers, then OSC 52.

Run :checkhealth vim.provider to see which one Neovim picked, or why it found none. On a Linux box where "+ydoes nothing, the answer is almost always “install wl-clipboard or xclip”. To use the clipboard for every yank, the Lua version of the setting is:

vim.opt.clipboard = "unnamedplus"

The Neovim docs also give a ready-made g:clipboard block for WSL that copies with clip.exe and pastes through PowerShell. Use that one if detection picks the wrong tool there.

How do you paste into Vim without the indentation going wrong?

You copy a tidy block of code from a browser, press Ctrl+Shift+V in insert mode, and every line lands further right than the last. The terminal is typing the text into Vim one key at a time. Vim can’t tell that from you typing, so its auto-indent adds a level on top of the indentation already in the text.

From the most reliable fix to the oldest:

• Paste from the register. In normal mode, "+p inserts the text as one piece, so auto-indent never runs. In insert mode, Ctrl+R Ctrl+O then + inserts it literally, with no auto-indent. You need a clipboard build for both.
• Let bracketed paste handle it. Vim has supported it since patch 8.0.0210. The terminal marks where pasted text starts and ends, and Vim then inserts it literally. Vim switches it on by itself for terminals that identify as xterm, which covers most terminal apps. Inside tmux or screen it often stays off, and Vim’s terminal docs give a few lines of vimrc to force it there.
• Fall back to paste mode. Run :set paste, paste, then :set nopaste. The paste optionturns off auto-indent, mappings and abbreviations while it’s on, which is why you have to remember to turn it back off.

Neovim users can skip the last one. Neovim’s deprecated list calls the paste option obsolete, because Neovim handles pasted text on its own. It also dropped pastetoggle, so old vimrc lines that set it don’t carry over.

Copying out of Vim over SSH

When Vim runs on a server, "+ycan’t reach the clipboard on your laptop. The server usually has no display, so it has no clipboard of its own either. The fix is OSC 52, an escape code that Vim prints and your local terminal turns into a copy on your machine. Your terminal has to support it. Windows Terminal does, and iTerm2 does once you allow apps to access the clipboard in its settings.

Neovim does this on its own. Its OSC 52 provider switches on when it finds no other clipboard tool, which is the normal state of a server, but only while the clipboard option is empty. If you set unnamedplus in a shared config, or tmux gets in the way of the detection, force it:

vim.g.clipboard = "osc52"

Vim caught up in version 9.2, which ships an optional osc52 package. It needs a Vim built with the clipboard provider feature, which arrived in patch 9.1.1857. Turn it on in your vimrc:

packadd osc52
set clipmethod+=osc52

The package’s own help warns about pasting. Some terminals let a program copy through OSC 52 but not paste. On those, a "+p just waits until you press Ctrl+C, and setting g:osc52_disable_paste to true stops the wait. tmux can confuse its detection too. On an older Vim, the vim-oscyank plugin does the same job. Copying out of a remote shell without any editor is covered in copy and paste in the terminal.

How do you copy in tmux?

tmux has its own copy and paste, called copy mode. Press the prefix (Ctrl+B by default) then [ to enter it, and the prefix then ] to paste what you copied. Inside copy mode, the keys depend on the mode-keys option. The tmux manual says it defaults to emacs keys, unless your VISUAL or EDITORvariable contains “vi”. Most Vim users want this:

setw -g mode-keys vi
bind -T copy-mode-vi v send-keys -X begin-selection
bind -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-selection-and-cancel
set -g set-clipboard on

The two bind lines are there because tmux’s vi keys aren’t quite Vim’s. Out of the box, Space starts a selection, Enter copies it, and v switches to a rectangle. With the lines above, v and y work the way your fingers expect.

The last line is about the clipboard. tmux’s set-clipboard option defaults to externalin tmux 3.4, which we confirmed on Ubuntu 24.04. With that default, a copy you make in copy mode already goes to your terminal’s clipboard through OSC 52, as long as tmux knows your terminal supports it. Setting it to onalso lets programs inside tmux, like Neovim or Vim with the osc52 package, send their copies out. If you also want tmux’s copies piped to pbcopy or wl-copy, the terminal guide has that config.

Questions that come up next

For the other half of daily Vim use, the patterns in / and :s follow most of the rules in our regex cheat sheet, with Vim’s own escaping on top. And if the two clipboards on Linux are new to you, what the clipboard is explains where copied text actually lives.

Sources

• Vim reference manual: registers (change.txt), Vim help
• Vim reference manual: options, including clipboard and paste, Vim help
• Neovim providers: clipboard integration, Neovim
• tmux(1) manual page, man7.org