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 agent — 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.