It will not prevent copying text from OS X to X11.

However, this will also prevent copying text from any X11 application to Mac OS X ones. You need to deactivate this functionality in X11 preferences > Pasteboard: uncheck “Update Pasteboard when CLIPBOARD changes”. It currently does not know how to deal with vector images, so it just captures the screen, i.e., creates a bitmap copy, and then pastes that. Starting with XQuartz 2.3.2, X11 has some functionality to exchange the content of the clipboard with OS X. Sure enough, a quick search took me to the inkscape FAQ, and this section in particular: After beating my head against a wall trying to create a pattern-on-path effect, I realized that there must be something wrong with the clipboard implementation on the mac. I’ve always just resigned to use clone (ctrl-D) instead of copy/paste since on the mac, the copy/paste cycle results in a pixelated image being pasted into the document. wmctrl won't do it automatically, but it certainly helps in 'fishing' it from limbo.Inkscape is my go-to vector editing program and I’ve done many publication figures, exam questions, and other general work in inkscape on both mac and linux. Remember that each alias only works for the screen that Inkscape is associated with, you still need to drag-and-drop the window in order to switch screens. In order to make it more convenient I created 2 alias, to fix the coordinates for my Mac screen and for the external screen, respectively: alias fixInkscape='wmctrl -r Inkscape -e 0,2560,1440,1200,700'Īlias fixInkscapeExt='wmctrl -r Inkscape -e 0,0,0,2560,1300' Of course you need to replace 2560,1440 with your own external screen's resolution and 1200,700 to suit your main screen resolution.

The solution is to move the Inkscape window to a new coordinate that takes into account the size of the external screen, and this is where wmctrl comes in useful: brew install wmctrl It is basically in 'limbo' between the 2 screens. This means that if Inkscape is somewhere near origin (0,0) but still associated with my Mac's main screen then it doesn't appear on the external screen nor in my main screen. In other words, from the point of view of XQuartz the origin of my Mac's screen changes from 0,0 to 2560,1440 (which is the resolution of my external screen). It seems like the issue is that when I plug the external screen, it messes with the coordinate system of my Mac's screen, effectively shifting the origin of my screen by the resolution of the external screen.

Inkscape where is xquartz