Universal clipboard won’t work from ios to Obsidian Mac

I can copy text from Obsidian on ios/ipados, then use universal clipboard to paste that text on Obsidian Mac.

When I try to copy from Safari on either device and paste in Obsidian on the Mac it hangs and won’t paste.

What’s weird is that I can copy the same text from Safari on ios/ipad ios, and using Universal Clipboard, paste it into text edit on the Mac so the text is being sent to the Mac.

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does it work if you paste without formatting?

A little more detail: When I copy text from a webpage in Safari on iPhone and paste into Obsidian on Mac, I briefly see a beachball spinner, then a message that says it’s pasting from my phone, but it doesn’t actually paste. If I copy the url from the address bar, or even from a link in the webpage, it works.

When I paste without formatting I don’t see the above, just a brief highlight of the Edit menu, and it doesn’t paste.

thanks

[Merged from “”Pasting from iPhone(Airdrop)“ does not work in Obsidian Desktop(Apple Silicon Mac)”]

I have made sure that airdrop itself does work, because I can paste texts from iPhone clipboard onto other MAC apps such as my edge browser or apple note. And I just cannot paste anything directly onto an Obsidian page.

It’s not just a Safari- or browser-specific issue.

I can copy text on my iPhone and see the bar on my Mac indicating that it’s being transferred, but then it won’t paste into Obsidian on my Mac. But it will paste into other apps, so I end up having to paste it into another (Mac) text editor, copy it again from there, and then paste that into Obsidian.

Oddly enough, it does work the other way around—I can copy text on my Mac and it will paste directly into Obsidian on my iPhone.

I’m using macOS Ventura 13.2 and iOS 16.3, both with the current stable versions of Obsidian and an up-to-date installer on macOS.

@WhiteNoise I had filed this as a separate bug report because another moderator asked me to do so.

Any news on a fix for this bug? It was first reported over a year ago.

Bump this is still broken.

Still facing this issue

The Universal Clipboard finally seems to be working for me today, so this issue may finally be fixed.

  • Desktop Version 1.5.3 (Installer 1.5.3)

  • Mobile Version 1.4.16

  • macOS Ventura Version 13.6.3

  • iOS 17.2.1

We haven’t touched anything.

As I just noted, it’s now working for me. Try updating your Obsidian installer on your Mac (i.e., download a new .dmg from the Obsidian website rather than updating through the Obsidian settings). Remember to back up first.

cc @climbtime

I’m guessing it may have been fixed upstream in Electron. I update my installer more often than most people. :wink:

We haven’t updated that either.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

I’ll keep an eye on it and see whether it continues to work consistently.

I’m still seeing it, alas.

  • Obsidian desktop 1.5.3 (installer 1.5.3) on MacOS 14.1.2
  • Obsidian mobile 1.4.16 on iOS 17.1.2

@CawlinTeffid Weird, it’s still working perfectly for me today. I have Pure Paste installed on my Mac—I wonder if that could be making a difference?

It’s one of Sindre Sorhus’s free apps on the Mac App Store.

It causes paste to insert selections as plain text globally by default. If that’s the reason it’s working for me, it may be that Obsidian (or Electron) is tripping over the conversion from rich text to plain text when it’s coming from the universal clipboard.

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Maybe! Could also be some of the version differences we have.

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Looks like we’re both running the same versions of Obsidian. The biggest difference is that I’m on Ventura and you’re on Sonoma. Our iOS versions are only slightly off—looks like you haven’t upgraded to the latest stable version.