The qxl display and vdagent running in guest do just this. Unfortunately, the options needed in qemu command line to make vdagent work with the spice client do not seem to be documented anywhere.
see bug 1452742 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/498039 Title: No copy/paste with VNC display with Windows guest Status in QEMU: Confirmed Bug description: There is no copy/paste functionality between a Windows guest and the VNC client. This is a significant usability problem. One work-around is to run VNC inside of the guest. But that appears to have more overhead than qemu's VNC display. Obviously, qemu's VNC display is just a display device and knows absolutely nothing about the Windows clipboard. Thus, to interface with the guest's clipboard would require a helper app running in the guest that can hook into qemu. This would probably be the best solution. There are probably not a lot of qemu developers interested in trying to write the helper app. Not exactly an interesting job. But since it is a significant usability problem, and many users would see this as a major oversight, I suggest leaving this bug open long-term as a hint so that some volunteer later looking for something to do might take pity on everyone and write this helper app. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/498039/+subscriptions