I just started noticing it like half an hour ago. I’m fairly new to this OS, so I have no idea where to look for any logs or anything.
I took a screenshot with Spectacle, and instead of it putting it into the clipboard it cleared it. Then when chatting on Discord (thru Vencord) and pressing ctrl-A & ctrl+X to write another message first, ctrl+V didn’t paste as my clipboard was empty. the screenshot happened multiple times, text only once. I can’t replicate it. I’m on Arch KDE, checked the clipboard setting, I don’t have a hotkey that I may be fat-fingering. I tried rebooting.
I tried abusing the clipboard while writing this, and just to mock me everything worked. So this might be a spam post without me even knowing, in that case I’m sorry; But please tell me how I can look at the logs, maybe I can catch it red handed still.
edit: no problem since, I haven’t done anything. Sorry for wasting your time.
Clipboard in Linux is weird. Can you replicate this:
- Copy text
- Close the application you copied from
- Paste into a different application
- Nothing appears
If so, that means you don’t have a clipboard manager running, default for KDE is Klipper I believe.
step 4 didn’t happen. AKA it works now. I have a guess as of why a random app wouldn’t be running. And it makes sense that closing would clear it, as screenshotting opens a fullscreen app. But I don’t get it, how can closing an application delete my clipboard?
This explains it. Especially the section about selections. A program “owns” the “clipboard” and if it stops it is released. Aka bye bye copied data
Got around to reading it, good to know. Thanks!
Do you have a password manager installed?
The one I use can populate the clipboard with usernames, passwords, etc. for easy pasting but I’m pretty sure it clears the clipboard after a time for security.
If the clipboard is used for something else within that time window, that could be cleared out instead, I imagine. Caveats being that maybe mine is smarter than that or my memory isn’t great so even if it has happened I don’t remember. The fact this idea occurred to me makes me wonder though.
Also, different applications do things differently so maybe even if mine doesn’t, yours might, etc.
The fact it was a one-off might also tie in because we log into things about as sporadically as one-off weird things happening, and you might not have connected the two, so to speak, if that’s what’s happened.
I’d love for this to be the case. But no, sadly I have not moved to a password manager, YET. My ongoing best theory is that Klipper stopped.
