User profile for user: MacsAreDank
MacsAreDank Author
User level: Level 1
13 points

Cut, Copy and Paste buggy on OSX El Capitan

I am having consistent issues with cut, copy and paste being buggy. There are times when it has worked perfectly and other times where some of the following issues happen.


  1. cmd+c => cmd+v : Can see the edit menu at the top of each app I have tried it in flash (meaning the correct key sequence is being pressed) this will recognise that there is something on the clipboard as right clicking has the option to paste although it pastes nothing at all, completely blank.
  2. When cmd+c => cmd+v does work it is pasted additional spaces or new lines in between lines. And not just a few new lines, about 25-50 new lines when that was never a copied character.


Things that I have tried.


  • Restarting in safe mode - this seemed to rebuild the clipboard / cut/copy/paste server. Worked for a while and then stopped working.
  • launchctl stop com.apple.pboard => launchctl start com.apple.pboard => this has had no effect at all and the status of the process seems to be showing -9 which I haven't been able to find much documentation about, was assuming this is an error.
  • Activity monitor => pressing the little X button to kill pboard. - This worked for about 5 minutes but the second I tried to copy more than one line of text or something more complex it died once again.


Programs I use (in case it is one of those):

Chrome.

VSCode.

Xamarin.

Android Studio.

Atom.

Virtual Box.
Microsoft Remote Desktop.

SourceTree

iTerm.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5), null

Posted on Jun 19, 2016 7:29 PM

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6 replies
User profile for user: reckoner
reckoner
User level: Level 1
5 points

Apr 24, 2017 1:09 PM in response to MacsAreDank

I have the same issue.


A short while after reboot, I cannot copy text from Quip.


I restarted pboard and pbs, and found that sometimes I could copy from Quip, and only paste in Slack.


Another symptom I have is that when it breaks, I can no longer drag files from a Dock folder stack.


However, when I log in as a different user (you can create one called "Test"), everything appears to work correctly.


I also run Alfred, Dropzone 3 (which appears whenever I drag something).


I currently believe that it is related to Electron (the core behind VSCode and Atom).


Another culprit could be iTerm - it has a clipboard feature too.


Once its broken the only fix is a reboot. This *****. This is my biggest pain on macOS at the moment.

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User profile for user: beatrizpalacios
beatrizpalacios
User level: Level 1
4 points

Jun 27, 2016 3:47 PM in response to MacsAreDank

I am getting the same exact issue as you. I have noticed it happens if I am copy/pasting a lot of text at one given time.


In particular, it has only happened to me while copying copious amounts of text off of an ebook I am reading on Adobe Digital Editions, which I then paste onto a text box on Adobe In Design. It takes a few pages of copying to get this error, but it eventually gets so terribly stuck that the only solution is to restart. It is really getting on my nerves. And then you can see how this issue affects any application I open: Mail, TextEdit, Safari, Chrome...


The thing is that once I get the error, the clipboard does not freak out if I try to copy a few characters or a short sentence. But if I try to copy a large amount of text, it pastes the last item on my clipboard which also had large amounts of texts. In other words, it seems to regress and forget the last few copies I made of short text. I have searched all over for solutions and none work.


Out of all of the forums I have read, it seems like this issue does not happen within a given set of applications, but just system-wide.

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User profile for user: MacsAreDank
MacsAreDank Author
User level: Level 1
13 points

Jun 28, 2016 5:04 PM in response to beatrizpalacios

I agree with you in this seeming to be system wide and it does get worse the more you copy. I am replicating your exact results as well.

I have found that if you copy 5-6 times on the same piece of text that isn't working and then paste it seems to overwrite the fail in the buffer.


This is an incredibly infuriating bug as it basically halves my productivity throughout the day as I need to retype nearly anything that I would rather just copy and modify.


I have for the time being installed a virtualized Windows 10 environment on my Mac so that I can actually be productive. Copy and Paste seems to work a lot better inside the virtual machine than it does in the base operating system.

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Cut, Copy and Paste buggy on OSX El Capitan

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