Use pbpaste for clean shell history
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Using for command substitution keeps sensitive or long URLs out of your shell history. Instead of typing , copy the URL to clipboard and run . This prevents...

Date: March 17, 2025

Using pbpaste for command substitution keeps sensitive or long URLs out of your shell history. Instead of typing git clone https://github.com/user/repo-with-long-name.git, copy the URL to clipboard and run git clone "$(pbpaste)". This prevents the URL from appearing in ~/.bash_history or ~/.zsh_history.

To get pbpaste working on both Xorg and Wayland, add this to your shell config:

```
if [[ $(command -v wl-copy) ]]; then
    alias pbcopy='wl-copy'
    pbpaste() { wl-paste; }
elif [[ $(command -v xclip) ]]; then
    alias pbcopy='xclip -selection clipboard'
    pbpaste() { xclip -selection clipboard -o; }
fi
```

The function approach (instead of alias) enables command substitution, while the quotes around $(pbpaste) handle spaces and special characters safely.

Now you can use it.

```
git clone "$(pbpaste)"
```

More importantly secrets can stay out of your history.

```
export GITHUB_TOKEN="$(pbpaste)"
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="$(pbpaste)"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="$(pbpaste)"
export DATABASE_URL="$(pbpaste)"
```