An extension for password-store that copies the password and additional metadata (e.g. login name) into separate X selections.
Defaults:
- password:
PASSWORD_STORE_X_SELECTION=clipboard(default inpass) - metadata:
PASSWORD_STORE_X_SELECTION_META=primary(this extension)
See below for more on X selections.
The default from pass insert foo results in a one-line password file
($PASSWORD_STORE_DIR/foo.gpg).
passzzwoo00rrd11!!1!!
A common use case is to copy this using pass show -c foo (or just pass -c
foo, show is default) into the Clipboard X selection (CTRL-V to paste).
pass also supports multiple lines (pass insert -m foo) in which the
password is on the first line (or any other with pass -c <line_number> foo)
and arbitrary metadata on the other lines. A typical entry would look like
this:
passzzwoo00rrd11!!1!! [email protected] meta:bar more meta=baz otherstuff
where the second line could be the login name. However, everything except the
password line is ignored by pass -c. It can only be displayed with another
pass foo and copied manually if needed. This extension additionally copies
the second line (by default) to another X selection
(PASSWORD_STORE_X_SELECTION_META).
$ pass cl fooThe default behavior is to copy the first line (password) to the Clipboard as
usual (like pass -c foo, paste with CTRL-V). Additionally, the second line
is copied into the Primary selection (Shift-Insert or middle mouse button to
paste). We can use the xclip tool to check what we copied into which
selection.
$ xclip -o -sel clip
passzzwoo00rrd11!!1!!
$ xclip -o -sel prim
[email protected]The typical workflow is thus pass cl foo, go to where credentials need to
be inserted (e.g. the browser), middle mouse -> login, CTRL-V -> password.
If you want to copy metadata from another line than the second, you can use
-l <line_number>.
$ pass cl -l5 foo
$ xclip -o -sel prim
otherstuffAlternatively, you can use the -r option to provide a regex matching that
line.
$ pass cl -r meta: foo
$ xclip -o -sel prim
barThe matching part of the line is removed, leaving only the metadata. This is
useful for selecting lines by prefix (such as meta:). Hint: avoid
whitespaces in your metadata lines (meta:bar instead of meta : bar) to
keep the regex simple. In the last example we would need -r 'meta\s+:\s+'
to match all whitespaces since we want the complete match to be removed,
leaving only bar without any whitespace.
pass show copies the password to Clipboard. If you need to paste this in a
shell where you cannot use CTRL-V (e.g. XTerm), you can copy it to Primary
instead with plain pass like so:
$ PASSWORD_STORE_X_SELECTION=primary pass -c fooand paste that in the shell or anywhere else with Shift-Insert or the middle
mouse button. With pass cl, you can use the -s flag to swap the
content of Primary and Clipboard to have the password in Primary.
$ pass cl -s fooCheck:
$ xclip -o -sel clip
[email protected]
$ xclip -o -sel prim
passzzwoo00rrd11!!1!!
$ <Shift-Insert>
passzzwoo00rrd11!!1!!Make sure to place this extension's options right after cl
$ pass cl [options] foo
else pass's command line parser will complain.
We do not support any options of pass show such as -c|--clip
[<line_number>] or -q|--qrcode [<line_number>]. For instance these won't
work
$ pass cl -c [<line_number>] foo # error $ pass cl foo -c [<line_number>] # ignored
If you want to use those, please use pass show directly and deal with
metadata in another way. Here, the password is always copied from the first
line.
$ export PASSWORD_STORE_ENABLE_EXTENSIONS=true
$ export PASSWORD_STORE_EXTENSIONS_DIR=$HOME/.pass_extensions
$ mkdir -p $PASSWORD_STORE_EXTENSIONS_DIR
$ ln -s $(pwd)/cl.bash $PASSWORD_STORE_EXTENSIONS_DIR/cl.bashThere are different X selections (see xclip -selection):
- primary: default in xclip, use Shift-Insert or the middle mouse button to paste
- secondary: usually not used
- clipboard: CTRL-V to paste in most GUI apps
See also xclip-dump.