Monterey: Copy and paste functions stopped working

Try booting to Safe Mode. That boot up takes minutes and clears caches and other things that may resolve your problem.

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

A lot of times just boot to Safe Mode followed by normal boot resolves problems.

Hey again!

Thanks for clarifying! Can you say if there is just NO response whatsoever? When you press that key combo? So it sounds like the typical “Edit > Copy/Paste” does work normally then?

You could be right. It could be a permissions issue for sure. However, it could also be related to a setting, glitch or hardware configuration, etc.

Is this a Mac notebook? Or Desktop? And likewise, is this the system keyboard? Or an external keyboard?

A few tests may help:

Turning on Accessibility Keyboard in System Preferences > Accessibility > Keyboard > Keyboard viewer.

When this is enabled, it should mimic the keys that are pressed, its possible that either Command, V and/or C are triggering diffeeent keys, or just not working as they should, etc.

Testing in a new user account is a good way to test permissions and/or if a setting or configuration issue in your user account.

Likewise, as lllaaass pointed out, testing in Safe Mode is a good way to rule out third party software or file system issues.

However, also, likewise testing with an external or other keyboard is a good test to rule, or not rule the keyboard out.

Hope one of those tests bring a result, cheers.

Accessibility Keyboard:

https://support.apple.com/guide/accessibility-mac/use-the-accessibility-keyboard-mchlc74c1c9f/mac

To find Safe Mode:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255

Create a new user for testing:

https://support.apple.com/en-is/guide/mac-help/mtusr001/mac

The results of safe mode and another user, as well as other hardware and even accessibility keyboard may help in which direction to go as far as a possible fix. Hope this helps, if not now, then eventually!

Hey again, that’s good to know. Are you able to test with an external/other keyboard? I’m sure it would most likely have the same result, so I’d personally follow these steps:

First, have you intentionally changed any of the keyboard or accessibility settings? And do the Command C/V keys work normally on their own? if they do, and you didn’t adjust any settings, I would try a series of steps, one after another testing after each step:

The easiest steps would be to remove any login items from System Preferences > Users and Groups > Login Items. Highlight the items and press the “-“ below to remove them, restart and test. If issue remains or there are no login items:

Quit all open apps.

Open System Preferences > Security and Privacy > Privacy.

Scroll down to Full Disk Access.

Unlock the preference pane.

Click the “+” and add Terminal to the window, (Its located in Applications > Utilities).

Next open Terminal, copy then paste this command in the Terminal window and press Return afterwards:

diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

Terminal will let you know when the process has finished, there is no time indicator, although it’s typically pretty quick.

When done, Quit Terminal and restart the computer and test.

My third possible solution would be to delete the user Cache:

Open Finder.

While holding Option on the keyboard, on the top menu, select Go > Library.

In the user library, open the “Caches” folder.

Select all the files, (Command A), then on the top menu click on File > New folder with selection.

Press Return, restart and test, hope one of those helps!

Have you created another user and saw if there is such a problem in that too, you will have to reinstall the OS

Hey JWheatie!

What method of copy and paste isn’t working?:

Command C/Command V?

Right Click > Copy or Paste?

Likewise is this happening in ALL Apps including everywhere in Finder?

Thanks!