GitHub - ianto-cannon/clean-clipboard: Removes email addresses from your clipboard

Remove emails from clipboard

A simple shell script that removes email addresses from your clipboard text.
Run this before pasting email threads into AI tools such as ChatGPT so that you do not give away personal data.
Can be used on macOS or Linux.

Requirements

You need one clipboard tool installed:

Platform	Clipboard tools supported	Install command
macOS	`pbpaste`, `pbcopy`	(preinstalled)
Linux (X11)	`xclip` or `xsel`	`sudo apt install xclip` or `sudo apt install xsel`
Linux (Wayland)	`wl-copy`, `wl-paste`	`sudo apt install wl-clipboard`
BSD	`xclip` or `xsel`	via package manager

Installation

git clone https://github.com/ianto-cannon/clean-clipboard.git
cd clean-clipboard
chmod +x clean-clipboard.sh
sudo mv clean-clipboard.sh /usr/local/bin/clean-clipboard

This makes the script available system-wide as the clean-clipboard command.

Usage

Copy any text containing one or more email addresses.
Run:
Paste — all email addresses will have been removed from the clipboard.

Example

Before running `clean-clipboard`:

From: Alice Johnson <alice.johnson@company.com>
To: Bob Smith <bob.smith@org.net>
Cc: Carol <carol_dev@startup.io>
Subject: Re: Conference Planning

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the update! I’ve attached the draft agenda. Could you ask Carol to confirm the catering details with the venue?  
I’ll follow up with the external speakers once we have the finalized schedule.

Best,  
Alice

On Tue, 4 Nov 2025 at 10:45, Bob Smith <bob.smith@org.net> wrote:
> Hi Alice,
> Just confirming that the hotel booking is complete. Carol will handle the transport arrangements.
> Best,
> Bob

After running `clean-clipboard`:

From: Alice Johnson <>
To: Bob Smith <>
Cc: Carol <>
Subject: Re: Conference Planning

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the update! I’ve attached the draft agenda. Could you ask Carol to confirm the catering details with the venue?  
I’ll follow up with the external speakers once we have the finalized schedule.

Best,  
Alice

On Tue, 4 Nov 2025 at 10:45, Bob Smith <> wrote:
> Hi Alice,
> Just confirming that the hotel booking is complete. Carol will handle the transport arrangements.
> Best,
> Bob

Now the text can be safely pasted into an AI tool without exposing personal email addresses.

Alternative installation: add to your shell

Instead of installing the script as an executable file, you can add the functionality directly to your shell configuration file (~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc) as a function.

macOS example

Add the following lines to your ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc:

clean-clipboard() { 
  pbpaste | sed -E 's/[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,}//g' | pbcopy
  echo "Email addresses removed from clipboard."
}

Then reload your shell:

source ~/.zshrc   # or source ~/.bashrc

You can now run the command directly from your terminal:

This will remove all email addresses from your clipboard text on macOS without requiring a separate script file.

License

MIT License