Ask HN: Why is the Mac Copy/Paste experience so inconsistent?

3 points by phodo 3y ago ↗ HN

When I command-shift-4, I expect a copy of that portion of the screenshot to go to the clipboard. And then I expect to paste what I copied. However, half the time it properly copies, and I can paste the image correctly. The other half of the time, when I paste, I see the previously copied item. Then, I see the screenshot appear in the lower right, and then it appears on my desktop, and I have to either a) re-copy and re-paste or b) drag the desktop image to my destination. Am I not doing the right method? Note: I'm a Mac user for >15 years.

3 comments

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ggm 3y ago ↗

I too see this inconsistent behaviour. It looks like Apple implemented two strategies: an "old" one which respects the traditional clipboard, and a "new" one which uses small overlay panes in some notional sweetspot and gives you a 3 second (or thereabouts) window of time to drag-and-drop the screenshot.

I don't think they workshopped how they play together, or how a user controls when which one is invoked or what desktop switching to find another context to "paste" into.

Grrrr. No solution, just validating your perception.

phodo 3y ago ↗

Thank you for sharing your perspective. Glad I'm not the only one. One thing I stumbled upon is if your window is maximized (full screen) and you do the cmd-shift-4, it appears in the clipboard more often. But then again, I might be overfitting on recency and randomness.

solardev 3y ago ↗

Sorry to ask, but are you sure you're holding down the right hot keys? If I remember right, command shift 4 should should save to the desktop. Command control shift 4 should save to the clipboard.

If in doubt, use https://shottr.cc/ instead. The dev is pretty active here on HN.