4 ms·
Ask HN: Why is the Mac Copy/Paste experience so inconsistent?
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.
- ggm 4y agoI 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 4y agoThank 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 4y agoSorry 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/ https://shottr.cc/ instead. The dev is pretty active here on HN.