Hi List! I think that the interaction between visual-mode and the X11 selections is not optimal. Since I don't know if the current behavior is intentional, I haven't yet opened a bug report. The selected text in visual-mode is currently copied via the function x-select-text. With the Emacs 24.1 default configuration, this copies to the X-selection CLIPBOARD (configurable through x-select-enable-clipboard and x-select-enable-primary.) In the rest of Emacs, this function is only used for the explicit copy/yank commands. Copying the active region is controlled by the variable select-active-regions and uses the PRIMARY X-selection by default. This behavior is consistent with most other X applications: The mouse selection is saved in PRIMARY and the explicit copy/paste commands use the CLIPBOARD. Thus, it would be nice if Evil would also use the PRIMARY selection by default for the selected text in visual-mode. I currently use the following redefinition of evil-visual-update-x-selection, that does what I need: #+BEGIN_SRC elisp (defun evil-visual-update-x-selection (&optional buffer) "Update the X selection with the current visual region." (with-current-buffer (or buffer (current-buffer)) (when (and (evil-visual-state-p) (fboundp 'x-select-text) (or (not (boundp 'ns-initialized)) (with-no-warnings ns-initialized)) (not (eq evil-visual-selection 'block))) (x-set-selection 'PRIMARY (buffer-substring-no-properties evil-visual-beginning evil-visual-end)) (setq x-last-selected-text-primary )))) #+END_SRC Regards, Hans-Peter