Setup a keyboard shortcut to paste text

There are quite a few situations where you surely have felt that you are writing the same thing over and over again.

• When you need to enter your email address (but you don’t want your browser to store it);
• When you use a shared mailbox but you like to sign your name;
• etc.

In this quick post I show you how you can set a keyboard shortcut to paste a predetermined text of your choice.

Setup

Step 1. Install both xdotool and xclip

sudo apt-get install xdotool xclip

Step 2. Open your Keyboard Shortcuts window

In Xubuntu go to to your start menu and write “Keyboard”. Open Keyboard | Applications Shortcuts and select + Add.

Step 3. Add the following one-liner. Change YOUR TEXT with anything you want.

/bin/bash -c "sleep 0.2 && printf 'YOUR TEXT' | xclip -selection clipboard && xdotool key Control_L+v"

Step 4. Select the keys you want to use for the shortcut. Be careful to not create a conflict with other keyboard shortcuts already set.

Note this will update your clipboard with “YOUR TEXT”, so if you were copying other text, you will loose that text and Ctrl+V will paste “YOUR TEXT”.

However this will not interfere with the mouse middle-click clipboard since they are different buffers (different clipboards). This means you are able to select a piece of text with your mouse and paste it with middle-click AND use your shortcut at the same time.

Example

In my case I want the following text to be pasted whenever I use the keys combination: Super+O

Best Regards,
Olga Carvalho

So my one-liner will be:

/bin/bash -c "sleep 0.2 && printf 'Best Regards, \nOlga Carvalho' | xclip -selection clipboard && xdotool key Control_L+v"

And my key combination will be: Super + O

Now, whenever I have my cursor in a textfield and use my shortcut, I’ll have my signature quickly typed.