Copy & Paste

Molkit keeps its own clipboard for chemistry objects, accepts images, SVG, and text from the system clipboard, and has a separate style clipboard for transferring formatting between objects. You can also drop image files straight onto the canvas.

Copying molkit objects

Ctrl+C copies the current selection, Ctrl+X cuts it, and Ctrl+V pastes. A copy includes the selected atoms, every bond whose both endpoints are selected, and any selected annotations. Projections (Newman, Fischer, Haworth, chair) come along automatically whenever all of their atoms are in the selection, even if you never clicked the projection itself.

The status bar flashes a confirmation such as “Copied 6 atoms, 2 annotations” for about a second and a half.

The internal clipboard is stored in the browser, not in the page, so it persists. You can copy in one molkit tab and paste in another, or paste after a reload. When internal data exists, it takes priority over whatever is on the system clipboard.

Where pasted objects land

Pastes land near the center of the viewport, offset slightly so they do not sit exactly on the original. Repeated pastes stagger a further 15 px each, so a run of pastes fans out diagonally instead of stacking.

If the target document uses a different default bond length than the source, the pasted geometry rescales to match, so structures keep their proportions across documents.

In animation mode, paste is frame-relative: objects land at the same position within the target frame that they occupied in the source frame, which makes copying content between animation states predictable. See Matching.

Pasting from outside molkit

When the internal clipboard is empty, Ctrl+V reads the system clipboard:

Images (screenshots, copied bitmaps) paste as an image annotation at the viewport center.
SVG markup copied as text pastes as a vector annotation, keeping it sharp at any zoom. See Importing images & SVG.
Plain text pastes as a text annotation using your current text defaults.

Note that a SMILES string pasted this way becomes plain text on the canvas; it is not parsed into a structure. To build a molecule from SMILES, use Structure > Import SMILES instead. See SMILES.

Drag and drop

Drag image files from your file manager onto the canvas. A drop overlay appears while you hover; objects land where you release. SVG files insert as vector annotations, other image formats insert as raster images, and multiple files dropped at once offset 20 px from each other.

Copying and pasting style

The style clipboard transfers formatting without duplicating objects. Select exactly one source object and press Ctrl+Alt+C (or Alt+Shift+C) to copy its style, then select one or more targets and press Ctrl+Alt+V (or Alt+Shift+V) to apply it.

Styles only apply to objects of the same kind:

Arrow to arrow: stroke, both arrowheads, bond clearance, and endpoint gaps (gaps only apply to attached endpoints).
Text to text: font size, family, color, alignment, background, border, and opacity.
Shape to shape: stroke, fill, and opacity (arrows are excluded; they use the arrow rules above).
Orbital to orbital: within the same family (s, p, hybrid, d, dz2, pi-overlap) the full geometry and style transfer; across families only universal visual properties transfer (lobe shape, fill mode, opacity, phase colors, stroke, and the half-lobe and cover-label toggles).

Position, rotation, and text content never transfer. The status bar reports how many objects received the style.

Ctrl+Shift+C copies the selection as a PNG image to the system clipboard, ready to paste into other apps. See PNG export.
Ctrl+D duplicates the selection in place with a small offset, skipping the clipboard entirely.