Blobdrop for fun and profit

Blobdrop is a fun CLI tool that enables dragging a file (or multiple) from the terminal to any other app on the desktop. It works with and without a GUI and is just another tool in the box for people who prefer to work in the terminal or find themselves on a low spec PC and are looking to reduce the amount of GUI apps required to get work done.

From their git:

• Drag and drop files directly out of the terminal.
• Drag files to other applications
• Pipe filenames asynchronously into stdin
• Start drag automatically without a GUI
• Hide the parent terminal emulator while dragging
• Automatically quit once all paths have been dragged
• Auto-hide the GUI while dragging
• Show mime icons and thumbnails for media
• Drag all files at once
• Act as a sink and print dropped files to the terminal
• Optionally keep the window on top
• Quickly open files with a single click
• Respect system dark mode
• Shell completions

Install

It is in the AUR, so installing with distrobox.

distrobox enter archie

yay -S blobdrop-git

distrobox-export -b /usr/bin/blobdrop -ep /home/dominic/.local/bin

Usage

It does what it says on the tin. You run:

blobdrop <some_file>

And then you can click to drop wherever you wish. A nice little utility for times I am looking at files in the terminal and want to just quickly drop into a new location in Thunar or upload to the browser.

There is a GUI and depending on the DE you can use different options. Command looks like this:

blobdrop -f <option> <file>

Options are:

• notify
• auto
• gui
• immediate
• clipboard
• stdout

On XFCE I used gui and it pops up a little window to then click and drag. I have notifications off on my desktop so couldn’t check that. But, I imagine if you are on a Gnome/KDE desktop this works well, too.

In the demo video from their git they also show using the GUI to show an entire directory of files, then can click and drag whatever you want. Command is like this:

blobdrop -f gui *

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