[Feature Request] Add config option to disable copy-on-select behavior

OC implements "XTerm / GPM"-style copy-on-select

Selecting text with the mouse automatically copies it to the clipboard when the mouse button is released. As far as I can find, there is no way to disable this behavior.

I'd like to be able to turn off copy-on-select via opencode.json config because frankly it interferes with the way I read and mark text on screen, in particular when screen sharing or pair coding. And I really don't appreciate accidental clipboard overwrites when scrolling/selecting to read text.

I understand that the TUI is mouse-aware, and I am aware that in e.g. Ghostty's config I can set mouse-shift-capture = never to make shift+click always selects text, without notifying the app, but I'd still like to prevent OC from bungling my current clipboard contents.

Proposed Solution

I guess a tui.copy_on_select config option would suffice. Keep its default as true to avoid surprising existing users.

{
  "tui": {
    "copy_on_select": false
  }
}

Current Behavior

Mouse selection → automatic clipboard copy

Expected Behavior (when disabled)

Allows users to select text visually without side effects

This issue might be a duplicate of existing issues. Please check:

feat: Add option to disable mouse capture in TUI for better terminal multiplexer compatibility #7926: feat: Add option to disable mouse capture in TUI for better terminal multiplexer compatibility
[FEATURE]: add a settings to disable mouse #6824: [FEATURE]: add a settings to disable mouse
How to disable text selection and clipboard overrides? #2845: How to disable text selection and clipboard overrides?

Feel free to ignore if none of these address your specific case.

Instead of making this a new setting in opencode.json and changing the shape of the config schema, I think that a better implementation would be to control it using a new menu item in the System category of the command_list, appearing as either "Disable copy-on-select" or "Enable-copy-on-select" (dependant upon it's current state) whose current state is persisted to the kv.json file.

Upon review, a OPENCODE_EXPERIMENTAL_DISABLE_COPY_ON_SELECT flag was added in the merged PR #4996. To me, this flag seems entirely adequate to resolve the issue, I'll leave this be.

@ariane-emory

Ah, thanks @ariane-emory, I failed to find that despite fuzzy searching for "copy on select" ...

I can confirm that OPENCODE_EXPERIMENTAL_DISABLE_COPY_ON_SELECT=1 opencode, while still not retaining the text-selection highlight at least prevents it from clobbering the clipboard. I'll be using that for now; thanks again.

(I thought I kind of knew terminal programming, but I realize I actually have no idea about what control codes or -modes are used by mouse extensions)

@ariane-emory

@ariane-emory the problem with OPENCODE_EXPERIMENTAL_DISABLE_COPY_ON_SELECT is that it no longer lets me select text in the terminal (and keep it selected). It's acting like "DISABLE_SELECT" all together.

I want to be able to select some text in the terminal, and optionally copy it if I want to with cmd+c.

That's interesting that might have something to do with which terminal you're running it in? I'm afraid I'm not sure if there's another way to disable the copy on select behaviour, sorry.

I'm using iterm2.
You can see the select behavior works as expected in other apps.

Here's another capture that demonstrates selection working for claude code and not in opencode, this time in the mac's default terminal.

As soon as you release the mouse, the selection disappears.

Yeah that’s precisely the behavior I described as “swallows my selection”. I’m using Ghostty. Basically the selection still works identically to the sock OpenCode behavior (when you let go of the button the selection disappear) but with the exception that it leaves the clipboard untouched.

…

On Wed, 28 Jan 2026 at 01:57 Tony Li ***@***.***> wrote: *tonglil* left a comment (anomalyco/opencode#10490) <#10490 (comment)> I'm using iterm2. You can see the select behavior works as expected in other apps. Here's another capture that demonstrates selection working for claude code and not in opencode, this time in the mac's default terminal. gif.gif (view on web) <https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/348b2061-f2cb-4d8e-856d-8848104287b5> As soon as you release the mouse, the selection disappears. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#10490 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAIJVTRIP4GSJZIAPXFHCD4I6YHZAVCNFSM6AAAAACSZTMHNWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZTQMBWHE2DIMRQGM> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

@jhrudden

@jhrudden I've got a fix that seemingly works correctly for:

iTerm2, ghostty, Kitty on MacOS.
The stock terminal on recent versions of Fedora and Ubuntu.

Just waiting to hear back from a Windows user about whether the fix works for them there.

This feature request is now critical for VS Code Remote SSH users.

With v1.1.49's OSC52 clipboard (which doesn't work in VS Code Remote SSH), copy-on-select:

Intercepts mouse selection
Clears the selection
Shows "copied" (but OSC52 silently fails)
Nothing in clipboard, selection gone

There's literally no way to copy text from opencode in VS Code Remote SSH without this config option.

See #11909 for the full context. The tui.copy_on_select: false option would at least let us manually select + Cmd+C as a workaround.

In st I can hold shift to select text using the terminal when inside of a TUI like OpenCode or LazyGit that disable the terminal selection (mouse reporting clicks mode), and it puts the text in the PRIMARY selection and stays selected, and if I hit the copy keybind (Ctrl + Shift + C for me) while selected, it copies the selected text to the CLIPBOARD selection. IDK about other terminals.

But personally this is not optimal because OpenCode dose the line unwrapping, it copy the actual lines not what is on screen, it just works better then the terminal's selection. But in the Linux/UNIX/X11 world if you don't copy to PRIMARY selection on select, you are bringing a Windowsism to Linux. OpenCode is literally the only program on my entire computer that use CLIPBOARD instead of the selection upon selection. It is starting to confuse my muscle memory as I go between everything else and OpenCode as I now middle mouse click (paste selection) when I should have Ctrl + Shift + V (paste clipboard) or vice versa. IMO, adding a toggle to use PRIMARY selection instead of CLIPBOARD would be the correct choice. I see disabling the copy on selection and witch selection as 2 separate options.

The change is just going from this:

echo "regular clipboard current" | xclip -selection clipboard

To using this:

echo "to selection clipboard" | xclip -selection primary

in 2 spots and then a similar thing for the xsel in the code packages/opencode/src/cli/cmd/tui/util/clipboard.ts or let the user choose at runtime somehow.

I often use opencode inside a container (because i don't trust the agents).
The "auto-copy-to-clipboard" keeps me from copying the code at all, because it pastes it inside the containers clipboard, if such thing exist. Even with the OPENCODE_EXPERIMENTAL_DISABLE_COPY_ON_SELECT=1. It keeps the selection, but i still cant copy (neither with ctrl+c(+shift), or right click).
But when i set the flag the selection stays until i right click. So there is a change.
Is there any way to disable any mouse interaction completely, so one can just use the terminal emulators copy function?

I'm trying to use opencode on a remote host wrapped in mosh+tmux and this is extremely retarded behavior.

Yes please. Mouse selection/paste is really broken right now. With most X terminals, we can override with shift-rightmouse or similar, to at least get paste from clipboard support, but the copy on selection disables any opportunity to copy to the clipboard :/

Also, OPENCODE_EXPERIMENTAL_DISABLE_COPY_ON_SELECT=1 currently allows selection, but effectively only delays the prior behavior: right-clicking, even with shift-rightclick to get the terminal menu for copying (and other actions) results in the prior behaviour: a "copied to clipboard" message from opencode (which seems to be untrue) appears, and the selection is cleared, before one can use the terminal menu to copy/paste (copy is then ghosted in the terminal menu, because nothing is selected at that point).

I'm just going to leave this here: a demo of working copy and paste: FROM 1968 ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6rKUf9DWRI

Does not work in any useful manner; disable it completely.

Update: https://github.com/zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw v0.8.0 and its zerocode TUI have the behavior I need. I will no longer be using opencode as much.

yeah this breaks things when running opencode on another machine over ssh. I cannot copy text! This is driving me nuts and totally breaks things. How is anyone able to move forward without the ability to copy text out of opencode?

Using konsole I don't see copy/paste with middle button working. Would be much easier if it worked out of the box instead of requiring hold shift.

You can switch between manual / auto in tui settings

@neriousy

29. You can switch between manual / auto in tui settings

@neriousy seem to works, great. 👍🏻
Could you point to some code + doc explaining how it works?

Actually it let the user to configure the copy triggering, but still not where it's copied

Ran on a sshed remote computer.

Note for Linux xterm's user CTRL+C suffice here to make the 'Copied to Clipboard' (= break in terminal) not the common SHIFT+CTRL+C (copy in terminal)

some ssh ticks could be useful

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1152362/how-to-send-data-to-local-clipboard-from-a-remote-ssh-session May be some useful tips could be picked from

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[Feature Request] Add config option to disable copy-on-select behavior #10490

OC implements "XTerm / GPM"-style copy-on-select

Proposed Solution

Current Behavior

Expected Behavior (when disabled)

some ssh ticks could be useful

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[Feature Request] Add config option to disable copy-on-select behavior #10490

Description

OC implements "XTerm / GPM"-style copy-on-select

Proposed Solution

Current Behavior

Expected Behavior (when disabled)

Activity

github-actions commented on Jan 25, 2026

ariane-emory commented on Jan 25, 2026

ariane-emory commented on Jan 25, 2026

cbrunnkvist commented on Jan 26, 2026

tonglil commented on Jan 27, 2026

ariane-emory commented on Jan 27, 2026

tonglil commented on Jan 27, 2026

cbrunnkvist commented on Jan 28, 2026

ariane-emory commented on Jan 28, 2026

ErcinDedeoglu commented on Feb 3, 2026

Obazzi commented on Mar 23, 2026

ygerlach commented on Apr 27, 2026

tidux commented on May 5, 2026

lee-b commented on May 16, 2026

disarticulate commented on May 29, 2026

tidux commented on Jun 5, 2026

treasuretron commented on Jul 7, 2026

akostadinov commented on Sep 1, 2026

neriousy commented on Oct 1, 2026

Sylvain303 commented on Nov 4, 2026

some ssh ticks could be useful

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