Copy Image Clipboard

👉 TEST IN YOUR BROWSER 👈

• Copy JPG or PNG images to clipboard easily.
• It is a lightweight library with 0 dependencies.
• You can use with React, Vue, Angular or with any other framework.

Installation

Using a package manager

yarn add copy-image-clipboard

npm i copy-image-clipboard

Without a package manager

Without a package manager you have to choose one of these:

Download the entire repository

- Use degit to download this repository without the git history:

npx degit LuanEdCosta/copy-image-clipboard

- Download a zipped file on GitHub:



After downloading the repository, you can use a file from the dist folder in your code. See more about the dist folder files below.

—-

About the dist folder

• index.browser.js
  • Minified to use in browsers
  • Exposes everything in a variable called CopyImageClipboard. e.g. CopyImageClipboard.copyImageToClipboard('...').
• index.js
  • Uses ESM module format.
  • Is not minified.
• index.common.js
  • Uses CommonJs module format.
  • Is not minified.
• index.d.ts
  • Contains TypeScript types.

Usage

Copy using the image source

This approach downloads the image using window.fetch, transform to PNG if is JPEG and then copy to clipboard using the image original dimensions.

// Import the copy function
import { copyImageToClipboard } from 'copy-image-clipboard'
// Pass the image src attribute here
copyImageToClipboard('assets/image.png')
  .then(() => {
    console.log('Image Copied')
  })
  .catch((e) => {
    console.log('Error: ', e.message)
  })
// Can be an URL too, but be careful because this may cause CORS errors
copyImageToClipboard(
  'https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81BES%2BtsVvL.png',
)
  .then(() => {
    console.log('Image Copied')
  })
  .catch((e) => {
    console.log('Error: ', e.message)
  })

Copy the rendered image into the document

With this approach no HTTP request is necessary, but the image is copied with the image element dimensions in the document. If the image is 1000x1000 but is shown as 300x300, the copied image will be 300x300. Use copyImageToClipboard function to copy the image with its original dimensions.

import {
  getBlobFromImageElement,
  copyBlobToClipboard,
} from 'copy-image-clipboard'
const imageElement = document.getElementById('image')
getBlobFromImageElement(imageElement)
  .then((blob) => {
    return copyBlobToClipboard(blob)
  })
  .then(() => {
    console.log('Blob Copied')
  })
  .catch((e) => {
    console.log('Error: ', e.message)
  })

Check if can copy images to clipboard

Use this function to synchronously check at runtime whether you can copy images to the clipboard. It checks if it can use the Fetch API and the Clipboard API.

import { canCopyImagesToClipboard } from 'copy-image-clipboard'
const canCopy = canCopyImagesToClipboard()
console.log('Can Copy Images To Clipboard:', canCopy)

Check if the permission to write data on clipboard was granted

Warnings:

• Permission to write data to the clipboard is automatically granted to pages when they are in the active tab, so generally you don’t need to use this function.
• If the browser has not implemented the Permissions API yet, this function will return false. Check the browser compatibility here: Permissions API Browser Compatibility.

import { requestClipboardWritePermission } from 'copy-image-clipboard'
requestClipboardWritePermission().then((hasPermission) => {
  console.log('Has Permission:', hasPermission)
})

Demos

• React + TypeScript - Show me the code | See it running in your browser
• Pure JavaScript Example - See on Codepen.io

You can contribute with more examples if you want

Compatibility

This project uses the asynchronous Clipboard API and Fetch API. Most browsers already support natively these two APIs, but for the old ones like Internet Explorer this library doesn’t work and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Use the links below to see the browser compatibility:

• Clipboard API - MDN
• Clipboard API - Can I Use
• Fetch - MDN
• Fetch - Can I Use

Enable Clipboard API Features in Firefox

From Version 87: You need to set dom.events.asyncClipboard.clipboardItem preference to true. To change preferences in Firefox, visit about:config.

Known Limitations

• For now you can copy only JPG and PNG images

  Other image types are not supported. If you try to copy other type an error will be thrown.

• This library only works in pages with HTTPS

  This limitation was defined by the browsers due to security risks involved when dealing with the user’s clipboard.

• You can only copy an image in the user’s active tab/document

  If the user is navigating in another tab and the copy function is called, an error will be thrown.

Contribution

Every kind of help is appreciated and this project can be better with your help.

What you can do:

• Create an issue to suggest an improvement or to describe a bug.
• Read the Contribution Guide to see how to contribute with code.

License

This project is under the MIT LICENSE.