Is it possible to implement a feature that can "Paste Image" to the terminal?

[doggy8088]

This question may sound a bit strange. The main reason I'm asking is that Claude Code allows you to directly press Ctrl+V to paste an image in the macOS terminal, but I have never seen such a design on Windows. Is it because Windows Terminal does not allow this operation?

[eamonburns]

How does this work? When you paste the image, does it paste a literal image, or just the path to the image file?

[doggy8088]

When I paste image from clipboard, I think paste a temp file path that point to the image is enough. I think this need a protocol to communicate so that these AI coding tool might integrate this feature to it. a path or image binary are all okay. We just need a standard way to implement.

[j4james]

@doggy8088 I suspect Claude Code may be reading the image directly from the clipboard with an OS API call, and that's triggered when you press a certain keyboard shortcut. On the Mac that's assumedly Ctrl+V, but on Windows you need to use Alt+V. At least that what it says in their change log here:

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md#1093

That said, it's possible the feature just isn't working at the moment. Their issue tracker seems to have a lot of bug reports recently from people complaining that image pasting isn't working (on all operating systems).