undefined | Better HN

0 pointsben_w6mo ago0 comments

The clipboard is no longer reliable.

Not sure when exactly that changed, but it was probably a few OS releases ago?

0 comments

Clipboard has been unstable on every OS (especially on Desktop - and I mean Linux, Windows and Mac), and I think part of the culprit is apps like Teams and Discord, if you Ctrl + C by mistake on an empty text box, IT COPIES THE EMPTY TEXT BOX effectively wiping your clipboard. It's the most irritating UX and it took me years to figure out. Always right click copy and right click paste, you'll notice it works 100% of the time as it used to.

jraph6mo ago

Clipboard managers help a lot there.

I just use KDE's default one, Klipper, and I raise the max entry number.

If something bad replaces your copy, you can get the good one back from the history.

There are nice features like QR code generation for your copied text if you want to quickly share something with someone else's phone as well.

mcintyre19946mo ago

That’s a really interesting solution to copy-pasting between devices, which is one of them features Apple has that I rely on a tonne even though it’s horribly unreliable. I wonder if anyone has a similarly clever way to copy from mobile to your computer.

1 more reply

zdragnar6mo ago

Copying empty text is a configurable flag in some linux environments, at least, but I'm not sure if that behavior is faithfully preserved in teams / discord / etc as I've never really had it on.

spookie6mo ago

On Linux you can just select the text and simply paste it using middle click. It works everywhere on Xorg, on some environments on Wayland. And it will only copy what you selected... everytime.

pacifika6mo ago

I’ve copied with right click out of chatGPT on Firefox and the contents not ending up on my clipboard. Not reliably.

Xss36mo ago

Thats chatgpt doing ott wrapping and breaking web standards in a way chrome accepts but firefox doesnt last i looked

markild6mo ago

Could be because of shared clipboard between devices?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse