Custom Paste Image

Paste a clipboard image straight into a markdown file, with a configurable target folder and link style.

VS Code's own Markdown Language Features already paste a bitmap on Ctrl+V. This extension goes further:

Reads more than a bitmap: a file copied in Explorer/Nautilus arrives as a file-drop-list, not pixels, which the built-in paste and most third-party paste-image extensions miss entirely.
Prefers a real PNG over a flattened bitmap where the clipboard offers both (browsers, the Snipping Tool), which keeps transparency instead of turning it black.
Configurable save location and link style — next to the file, a fixed subfolder, or a workspace-root-relative path for static sites that serve a folder at the site root.
Markdown or HTML output, the latter with a width placeholder for sizing.
Works on native Windows, in a Remote-WSL window, and on Linux (X11/Wayland), reading the clipboard through the platform's own tools rather than the Electron clipboard API.

Published by VidraSec, an IT security company — the Marketplace listing carries their verified publisher badge.

Usage

Press Ctrl+Alt+V (Cmd+Alt+V on macOS) in a markdown file. The image on the clipboard is written to disk and a link is inserted at the cursor:

![Login form](https://github.com/VidraSec/custom-paste-image/raw/HEAD/login-form.png)

What ends up on the clipboard:

You copied	Result
A screenshot (Snipping Tool, Print Screen, browser, Office)	Saved as PNG
An image file in Explorer/Nautilus	Saved with its own name and format
A path to an image file, as text	Saved with its own name and format

Selected text becomes the alt text and seeds the file name. Without a selection the cursor lands inside the empty ![].

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`customPasteImage.folder`	`""`	Where to save. Empty saves next to the file. `/assets/img` is relative to the workspace root. `images` or `../assets` is relative to the file's directory.
`customPasteImage.linkStyle`	`relative`	`relative` links from the file to the image; `workspaceAbsolute` links from the workspace root with a leading `/` (falls back to relative if the image isn't inside the workspace).
`customPasteImage.confirmFileName`	`true`	Ask for the file name before saving.
`customPasteImage.format`	`markdown`	`markdown` for `![]()`, `html` for `<img>` with a `width` placeholder.

Because folder can point outside the workspace, its workspace value is ignored in an untrusted folder; your user setting still applies. Trust the folder to let the repository's own value take effect.

Requirements

On Linux (not WSL), install wl-clipboard (Wayland) or xclip (X11) to read the clipboard.

Development

npm install
npm run watch      # rebuild on change
npm test           # unit tests for the pure helpers
npm run typecheck

Press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host with the extension loaded.

The clipboard readers need a real clipboard, so they are exercised by hand. Everything that does not — file naming, link encoding, alt-text escaping, URI list parsing — lives in naming.ts, format.ts and firstImagePath, is free of vscode imports, and is covered by src/test.

Publishing

npm run package    # builds a local .vsix, without publishing anything

To ship a release, once your changes are committed and pushed to main:

npm version patch   # or minor / major

This runs typecheck + test (preversion), bumps package.json, commits and tags vX.Y.Z, then pushes both (postversion). The pushed tag runs .github/workflows/release.yml: it packages the .vsix, publishes to the Marketplace, and only then creates the GitHub Release — so a rejected publish leaves nothing to clean up before you retry.

release.yml authenticates to the Marketplace via Microsoft Entra ID (global Azure DevOps PATs are retired December 2026), not a token secret. This is a one-time setup, already done for this repo — kept here for reference/recovery:

Create a publisher at marketplace.visualstudio.com/manage.
Create a user-assigned Managed Identity in the Azure Portal, with a federated credential for GitHub Actions (entity type Environment, environment name marketplace-publish, matching this repo).
Add the identity's Client ID and Tenant ID as the AZURE_CLIENT_ID and AZURE_TENANT_ID repository secrets, and create a GitHub Actions environment named marketplace-publish.
Register the identity with Azure DevOps once (az rest -u https://app.vssps.visualstudio.com/_apis/profile/profiles/me --resource 499b84ac-1321-427f-aa17-267ca6975798) and copy the returned id.
Add that id as a Contributor member on the publisher.

Locally, npx vsce publish --azure-credential picks up an az login session the same way.