Copy and paste from iPhone to MacOS not working

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

Apple needs to fix this ASAP. This feature was a huge selling factor in why I chose to get a Mac last year over a new Windows PC. Power users rely on macro keys / clipboard shortcuts to get a lot of work done across devices. Literally adds 30 mins to my daily workflows from having to send URLs through imsg/whatsapp to myself rather than a quick copy/paste. Not to mention I went through the whole process listed on their site to sign out/in to iCloud. Had to set up my whole iCloud / wallet again. Just a waste of time. Glad I found this where the community pointed out the problem otherwise I would have been losing it trying to figure out how to fix this still. Would like to see a response from apple regarding this but seems like they haven't even acknowledged the issue.

Please release a fix Apple - looks like this has been getting reported for some time now and its reasonable to expect more from you!

Not working for me - MacBook Pro m3 (Sonoma) and everything - fine between my other devices so long as not to nor from the Mac.

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!

No longer works for me either and it used to work very reliably. Messages also fails to update between devices. I tried turning Handoff off and on again on all devices with no success.

Yet another "It just (doesn't) work" feature that's got broken. I find the copy / paste works OK from Mac to iPhone but not for iPhone to Mac.

Sure, I find Windows to be a PITA generally and haven't used a Windows laptop for 15 years, but with so many of the things that are supposed to make Apple easier to live with being very patchy (Airdrop is also very temperamental) or even plain broke, I have a feeling the next big sum of money I will drop will be on a Windows laptop with better spec and less restriction. Gradually eating away at the 'ease of use' functionality of Apple knocks out one of the key reasons I have stuck with the brand.

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.

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.

This is a MAJOR issue!! copy/paste from mac to iphone only half the time works. I use feature a lot for work, today for example it was working great 1 minute and and then randomly stopped. normally I can restarts my iphone and it'll work again. not today.

Will be looking to switch away from apple if this doesn't get fixed

Indeed, lots of things work very poorly now, if at all. Keyboard on the iPhone is atrocious now too. Auto-correct unusable and I constantly have to select the Shift key 2-3 times before it will actually stay selected for a one letter press.

MacBook Pro Sonoma 14.1.1. IOS 17.1.2 Copy and paste used to work between my devices. It no longer does. I am logged into the same iCloud account on both. Looking at my iCloud account on my Mac, I can see my phone in the list at the bottom. Hand-off is enabled on both devices.

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.

Not working for me either. iPhone 13 + Macbook pro 2017

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.

The command syntax is incorrect, and Terminal returns "Not found. Defaults have not been changed."