Your machine & desktop
Files & clipboard
Your Mac and your machine are two computers. Day to day you'll move text, images, and files between them, and around inside the machine itself. Here's every one of those operations.
The mechanics differ a little by client:
- Native macOS app, feels local: Finder-style drag/drop and paste, and the system clipboard synced both ways.
- Browser, explicit Upload/Download actions, and clipboard within what the browser allows.
Copy & paste text
Text copies both ways. The one rule that trips people up: the app you're pasting into owns the paste shortcut. Wrkr keeps the clipboard in sync; each app just uses its own key.
Pasting text:
| Into… | Press |
|---|---|
| A Linux GUI app (editor, Chrome, Files) | Ctrl-V |
| A Linux terminal | Ctrl-Shift-V |
| A Mac app (native client) | ⌘V |
Copying text is the mirror:
| From… | Press |
|---|---|
| A Linux GUI app | Ctrl-C |
| A Linux terminal | Ctrl-Shift-C |
So the round trip is: select text in the machine's browser → Ctrl-C → switch to your Mac → ⌘V. And the same in reverse.
On the native desktop, ⌘V is reserved for pasting files (see below), so inside Linux apps use Ctrl-V / Ctrl-Shift-V for text. Other ⌘ chords pass through to the machine.
Copy & paste images
Images ride the clipboard the same way as text, in both directions. Copy an image on your Mac and paste it into a VM app that accepts images; copy an image in a VM app and paste it on your Mac.
Inside a terminal TUI, for example, attaching an image to a coding tool, the terminal app itself handles the attachment once Wrkr has put the image on the machine's clipboard.
Send files from your Mac into your machine
Native app, two ways, both landing in your machine's focused Files folder:
- Drag files or folders from Finder onto the machine's desktop.
- Copy in Finder (⌘C), then press ⌘V on the machine's desktop.
A single copied image file does double duty: it transfers as a file and is available as clipboard pixels to any VM app that asks for an image.
Browser, use the explicit Upload action to send selected local files or folders into the focused Files folder.
Click into the folder you want first, transferred files land in the focused Files folder.
Bring files back out (machine → your Mac)
Native app, copy the file inside the machine, then paste it on your Mac (⌘V in Finder). This is the accepted VM-to-Mac copy path: the machine announces the copied file and your Mac receives it.
Browser, select the VM file(s) or folder(s) and use the explicit Download action.
Copy & move files inside the machine
This is just a normal Linux desktop, so copying and moving files within the machine works exactly as you'd expect, nothing Wrkr-specific:
- Use the Files app to drag, copy, and move.
- Or the terminal:
cp,mv,rm, like any Linux box.
It's your computer.
Good to know
- Focus matters. Transferred files land in the focused Files folder, open the destination folder before you drop or paste.
- Multiple files (and any non-image file) use the file-transfer path and clear any stale text/image clipboard, so you won't paste a leftover selection by accident.
- The browser can't do Finder-style file paste or reach into your local filesystem, that's what the native app is for. In the browser, use Upload/Download.
- Your files are backed up. Anything under your home directory on the machine is covered by the hourly offsite backup.