How to copy/paste text using the mouse from one tmux instance in one terminal emulator to another tmux instance in a different terminal emulator?

Question

How can I copy some text using the mouse, between two terminal emulator instances, each running its own instance of tmux?

I've read this:

How to copy and paste with a mouse with tmux

And various other related questions, such as this one:

Copy text from one tmux pane to another (using vim)

However, I cannot get this to work.

I've tried both the configurations mentioned in the first question, but I'm unable to copy text.

Note that I'm not trying to copy between panes, or even windows within the same tmux instance. I have two terminal emulators (xfce4-terminal) running, each with its own tmux instance.

I'm using XFCE as my window manager, xfce4-terminal 0.8.7.4

Answer 1

You should be able to use your terminal emulator’s copy/paste; in XFCE’s case, you have two options:

• select the text you want to copy with your mouse, and middle-click in the target terminal;
• select the text, then “Edit” → “Copy” in the source terminal, and “Edit” → “Paste” in the target terminal.

This works independently of tmux.