Clipboard

The clipboard actions let your web app read from and write to the host system clipboard through the IDE. This is a text-only API with an extensible shape designed to support additional formats in the future.

import { getClipboard, setClipboard } from '@unextension/bridge'

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getClipboard()

Reads the current text content from the system clipboard.

const result = await getClipboard()
console.log(result.text) // 'Hello from clipboard'

Parameters

None.

Return value

Promise<GetClipboardResult>

Field	Type	Description
text	string	The clipboard text content, or "" if empty/non-text

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setClipboard(text)

Writes text to the system clipboard.

const result = await setClipboard('Copied by my extension!')
console.log(result.success) // true

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
text	string	The text to write to clipboard

Return value

Promise<SetClipboardResult>

Field	Type	Description
success	boolean	Whether the write succeeded

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Error handling

The two actions handle errors differently by design:

Scenario	getClipboard	setClipboard
Clipboard access denied	Promise rejects	Resolves with { success: false }
Empty clipboard	Resolves with { text: "" }	—
Non-text content on clipboard	Resolves with { text: "" }	—

getClipboard rejects on access failure because there is no meaningful fallback value. setClipboard resolves with { success: false } so callers can check the boolean without try/catch.

// Reading — use try/catch for access errors
try {
  const { text } = await getClipboard()
  console.log('Clipboard:', text)
} catch (e) {
  console.error('Cannot access clipboard:', e)
}

// Writing — check the success field
const { success } = await setClipboard('Hello')
if (!success) {
  console.warn('Failed to write to clipboard')
}

---

Types

Both result types are exported from @unextension/bridge:

import type { GetClipboardResult, SetClipboardResult } from '@unextension/bridge'

GetClipboardResult

interface GetClipboardResult {
  text: string
}

SetClipboardResult

interface SetClipboardResult {
  success: boolean
}