Copy and paste from iPhone to MacOS not working

Handoff (the name of the mechanism for transferring state data between your Mac an iPhone) doesn't rely solely on Bluetooth.

Both devices have to be logged in on the same iCloud account, and Handoff needs to be enabled.

So first check that you're logged into iCloud on both devices.

The on the Mac, check System Preferences -> General, and make sure that the 'Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices' is enabled.

On the iPhone, check Settings -> General -> AirPlay & Handoff to make sure it's enabled there.

Hi all,

I have faced the same issue and I've just managed to fix it by myself.

Except for having on all devices Handoff option Enabled you will need to run a command in your mac Terminal app.

Here are the steps:

• Open the Terminal app on your Mac (Applications > Utilities)

• Now, we will first delete Clipboard sharing and then enable it again. Here is how:

defaults delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.coreservices.useractivityd.plist ClipboardSharingEnabled

• Now, copy and paste this code and hit Enter:

defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.coreservices.useractivityd.plist ClipboardSharingEnabled 1

• Now check if copy and paste is working.

For me, it worked.(iOS 17.2 & macOS Sonoma 14.2)

I hope this helps!

Labachev

I've found a solution that worked for me in case anyone is still having this problem. I found that simply putting my iPhone in 'airplane' mode for a few seconds, then disabling 'airplane' mode solved it just like THAT. Only on the iPhone, Mac has no airplane mode but I didn't turn off wifi or ethernet.

I realize this thread is 9 months old but I ran into this issue today and hope this helps someone out there facing the same frustration. BTW, this solved ALL continuity/handoff issues for me.

Source: idownloadblog.com (https://bit.ly/IDB_Universal_Clipboard_not_working)

I should mention that I tried this AFTER doing Labachev's terminal suggestion above which (I think) didn't work for me but it's possible the one two punch of both did the trick, I honestly don't know. If airplane mode doesn't work, run Labachev's terminal suggestions THEN enable/disable airplane mode to mimic my steps exactly.

I'm on Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 and IOS 17.2.1, both current as of January 6, 2024 (today).

Good luck!

The terminal commands didn't work for me on my Mac M1 Pro running Sonoma 14. However, there was an Apple recommendation to check the HANDOFF setting on the Mac and the iPhone. In my case, the Mac -> Settings -> General -> Airdrop and Handoff -> Allow Handoff was On, but not on my iPhone. Once both settings were enabled on both devices, copy and paste on Safari worked immediately. Good luck.

I had this problem too, Monterey 12.7.3 to iOS/iPadOS 17.3.1

Since it worked between iPhone and iPad, but not between Mac and either of those, the problem was on the Mac.

Nothing mentioned helped. But a safe mode reboot, login, wait for it to settle down (use Activity Monitor if in doubt), logout, and reboot (normally) took care of it.

Safe mode evidently cleans up some unspecified things (caches, maybe more).

To solve it this morning without Terminal, I tried copying a piece of text from my Mac, which then pasted fine on iPhone. Trying the reverse, I copied a photo from iPhone and pasted it to my Mac.

For whatever reason, this seems to have reset the clipboard, and got things going again. Hats off to labachev for the inspiration of the clipboard being the culprit, not my Handoff settings which I haven't changed in years.

This solution worked for me

open finder and Locate file with Cmd + Shift + G, then paste:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.coreservices.useractivityd.plist

I discovered a key ClipboardSharingEnabled value is set to 0

The command to run if the string is 0 is:

defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.coreservices.useractivityd.plist ClipboardSharingEnabled 1

I kept having this issue between my macbook Pro & iPhone, and realized that simply closing the AirDrop window (or just switching to another directory in finder) fixed the copy/paste issue.

So the issue is that whenever the iPhone appears on the AirDrop window, the copy/paste feature seems to be frozen

Hope this helps other people!

I know this was posted a year ago but I just had this issue and easily fixed it.

1st) Make sure your WiFi, Bluetooth and AirDrop is on for both devices.

2nd) On your MacBook open "System Settings", click the "General" tab, then select the "AirDrop & Handoff" tab. Find where it says "Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices" and make sure that toggle is on.

2nd) On your iPhone/iPad open "Settings", click "General", select "AirPlay & Handoff" and make sure the "Handoff" toggle is switched on.

This worked for me without having to reset, reboot, jumpstart or whatever other people recommended doing, which only just confused to me.

I was having the same problem. I turned off handoff in settings and turned it back on and it worked. Hope that helps anyone else having problems.

Something to consider:

I was trying to use Google Translate on my iPhone to translate from Latin to English and then using translation on my Mac, and it didn't work. I tried all the suggestions in here and they were, frankly, a waste of time.

I found out that what I was doing "wrong" was using Google's copy button instead of the iPhone's routine. Google's button kept saying "text copied", but who knows where to. Using the iPhone's routine worked flawlessly. So, the source of the problem might be the App you are using and not the iOS.

Camelot thanks for the suggestion.

I turned off handoff on both devices and turned them back on and it worked.

Here's something that worked for me!

Firstly, turn on the airplane mode, wait a few seconds, and turn it off again. Once all the connections are restored, first copy something on your iPhone and try pasting it on your Mac. Once it works (and it will), just try the reverse (copy on Mac and paste it to the iPhone). Worked for me, hope it does for you too! Cheers!

I tried some of the suggestions here, e.g. labachev's terminal commands, disabling and enabling Airplane mode, as well as the Handsoff option but to no avail.

However, I tried going to Messages > Settings > iMessage and clicking on Sync Now and it suddenly worked. I can now copy from my iphone to my Mac. Hope this helps somebody.

iOS 17.4.1 & Mac Sonoma 14.4.1

I was also having this issue. Simple fix for me was to log out of my iCloud and log back in. Copy and paste now working.