# pbcopy

5 Hacker News commenters recommended pbcopy and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Built-in macOS commands that pipe text into and out of the clipboard from the terminal. Critics say copies can pick up a newline and rich text is not supported.

## Why people recommend it

- Powerful terminal clipboard commands (1 comments): "the terminal commands pbpaste and pbcopy in NeXTstep/Mac OS X as well as Services are so powerful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019969))
- Native macOS, no extra install (1 comments): "On MacOS, this is actually solved with the following native clis" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47203959))
- Pipes command output to clipboard (1 comments): "Pipes the the result directly into your clipboard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49729776))

## What people warn about

- Copies can include a newline (1 comments): "copying a hash or token comes with a new line character" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48782021))
- No rich text on clipboard (1 comments): "You can't put rich text on the clipboard with pbcopy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49960171))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [fzf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fzf.md): 78 recommend
- [jq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jq.md): 75 recommend
- [grep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grep.md): 65 recommend
- [Atuin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atuin.md): 63 recommend
- [GitHub CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-cli.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "pbcopy", https://hackerapproved.com/p/pbcopy/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).