Paste clipboard contents in places where you can’t paste

Note: this post is part of #100DaysToOffload, a challenge to publish 100 posts in 365 days. These posts are generally shorter and less polished than our normal posts; expect typos and unfiltered thoughts! View more posts in this series.

Today I was trying to run an AppImage in a firejail sandbox, to debug the issue that is currently blocking my KOReader Wallabag plugin patch.

In the process, I had to paste API keys that were too long to reliably type, and I couldn’t paste into the AppImage with the normal methods.

It turns out you can (duh) paste with a long press, just like on an e-reader. But this is so wildly unintuitive on desktop that I didn’t think of it at the time.

Instead, I wrote a two-line Python AutoKey script, bound to a keybinding (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Super+k, because all the good keybindings are already taken).

cb = clipboard.get_clipboard()
keyboard.send_keys(cb)

This gets the current clipboard content, and emits it as if it was being typed. Simple, and effective.

I’ve run into places where I can type but can’t paste before, so although there was a simpler solution in this particular case, the snippet might be useful in other circumstances.