Chrome browser has an excellent extension called autocopy, which copies text whenever some text is selected/highlighted.
To copy a region in emacs, I have to select the region and then press M-w to copy it. But whenever I select a region, I want the region to be copied automatically. How can I achieve that in emacs?
The selection can be copied automatically if the OS supports primary selection by setting the below variable.
(setq x-select-enable-primary t)
From C-h v x-select-enable-primary, you get,
Non-nil means cutting and pasting uses the primary selection The existence of a primary selection depends on the underlying GUI you use. E.g. it doesn't exist under MS-Windows.
To learn even more, visit the relevant info node by doing C-h i g (emacs) Primary Selection.
Another variable setting that goes in tandem with the above is to set the x-select-enable-clipboard to t. Doing that allows you to yank the contents copied from other X11 applications into emacs.
(setq x-select-enable-clipboard t)
When emacs 25.1 is released (supposedly the next stable version after 24.5), the x-select-enable-primary variable name will be deprecated and select-enable-primary must be used instead (removal of that x- prefix). Similarly x-select-enable-clipboard will be deprecated in favor of select-enable-clipboard.
If you just need this behavior for mouse selections, you can use the built-in setting mouse-drag-copy-region:
(setq mouse-drag-copy-region t)
If non-nil, copy to kill-ring upon mouse adjustments of the region.
