Copy and Paste arrives for Linux/WSL Consoles
Rich Turner
As of Windows 10 Insider build #17643, you can copy/paste text from/to Linux/WSL Consoles!!!
We know that this is a feature MANY of you have been waiting for – our sincerest thanks for your patience & continued support while we untangled the Console’s internals, allowing us to implement this feature.
To ensure that we don’t break any existing behaviors, you’ll need to enable the “Use Ctrl+Shift+C/V as Copy/Paste” option in the Console “Options” properties page:
With the new copy & paste option selected, you’ll be able to copy and paste text using [CTRL] + [SHIFT] + [C|V] respectively.
Note: This setting can be set independently for each shell or shortcut: If you pin your shortcuts to your favorite shells (e.g. Cmd/PowerShell/Linux) to your task bar, and modify the properties of Consoles launched via these shortcuts, your settings will only be made to the affected shortcuts. If you later launch the same shell via the Start menu, or the run dialog, your settings will not be found as they’ll have been saved to your pinned shortcuts, not your Start menu tiles/shortcuts, or registry settings. Please let us know how you get on with this feature If you find any issues, please lookup/post issues on our GitHub issues repo. If you have other feature asks, please find & upvote, or post them on our UserVoice
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6 comments
Just finding WSL, which has been a life-saver for me on a current project. Does seem odd to have to retrain myself to add the shift-key for cut and past after so many years and so many programs using ctrl-x and ctrl-v. Are we going to get there eventually, or is this the way it is?
I would very much doubt it. The [control-shift] sequences are how linux consoles operate. Further, overwriting the ctrl-c ctrl-x ctrl-v sequences with copy/cut/paste would break some of the more fundamental aspects of linux shells, because ctrl-[thing] is how you send signals to the running application. Particularly colliding here is ctrl-c, which sends the “SIGINT” signal to the running application, basically telling it “I don’t care what you’re doing, exit now please”.
Hi
What about ctrl+ins / shift+ins?
Thats what i use in windows for decades and miss the most in wsl
In linux i use a lot select mouse to copy and RMB to paste. What do you think of that?
Thank yoh
I second this. Ctrl/Shift + Ins works well in Linux.
Hey! I’ve been trying to get to the properties of Ubuntu for the last two hours, but I cant. How do you get to this options page?
Alas, you don’t! the Linux distro “apps” that you see in your taskbar aren’t traditional shells – they’re UWP apps that launch the distros. UWP apps don’t expose properties like traditional Cmd/PowerShell do.
If you want to change the properties of your Ubuntu window, open Ubuntu, then hit the system menu at the top left of the Console window, and hit properties.
Better still, we do recommend that you adopt the Windows Terminal (download from the Win10 store or GitHub repo if store is not available to you). Terminal gives you a MUCH more powerful and configurable command-line experience.