Clipboarding merging occurring on single cmd+c press

[oorahduc]

I'm using version 3.3.2 and when pressing cmd+c once, an estimated 75% of the time it still does a clipboard merge, which leads to multiple successive appended strings, rather than copying something new to the clipboard. 

 

Anyone else experience this?

[Vero]

@oorahduc Do you have any third-party clipboard managers or keyboard modifiers that may be interfering?  Make sure that these are all quit, check Accessibility (under System Prefs > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility) for any apps that could be manipulating your keyboard, and try again.

 

If you're still seeing the behaviour, try temporarily creating a new user account on your Mac, so that you can test it on a vanilla OS without your apps running.

 

Let me know how you get on

 

Cheers,
Vero

[oorahduc]

Hey Vero!

 

First off, I want to thank you for all the effort you and Andrew have put into Alfred over the years. I've been a very happy user for a long time now.

 

I don't use any other apps that affect the keyboard in any way - confirmed that in accessibility. I think the issue stems from my keyboard's "Key Repeat" and "Delay Until Repeat" which are 100% fast and 100% short (screenshot). The strange thing about the behavior though, is that it's not 100% of the time. When alfred _does_ begin to do merging with single key presses, adding a small delay between the CMD press and the C press copies normally instead of merging. Given that it's not a consistent behavior I'm unsure of what else could be an influence, but at least there's a workaround.

[Vero]

@oorahduc Alfred will merge if you press Cmd + C then C again (while still holding Cmd), so if you've set the delay for macOS to repeat a key to be shortest, it's not surprising that macOS will report the C key as having been pressed more than once even if you only press it for a relatively short time. (which would explain why it only happens occasionally, which would be when you hold the key marginally longer)

 

Have you tried slowing down the delay to establish whether, with a normal delay, the behaviour is as expected? This will at least confirm that this is the reason for the behaviour.

 

If you're not keen to slow down the Delay, you could disable the default merging feature, and create yourself a workflow that merges the latest two clipboard entries, so that you can use a different key combo to trigger a merge.

 

Cheers,
Vero

[drwatson]

On 6/7/2017 at 1:16 AM, Vero said:

@oorahduc Alfred will merge if you press Cmd + C then C again (while still holding Cmd), so if you've set the delay for macOS to repeat a key to be shortest, it's not surprising that macOS will report the C key as having been pressed more than once even if you only press it for a relatively short time. (which would explain why it only happens occasionally, which would be when you hold the key marginally longer)

 

Have you tried slowing down the delay to establish whether, with a normal delay, the behaviour is as expected? This will at least confirm that this is the reason for the behaviour.

 

If you're not keen to slow down the Delay, you could disable the default merging feature, and create yourself a workflow that merges the latest two clipboard entries, so that you can use a different key combo to trigger a merge.

 

Cheers,
Vero

I've had this issue happen before, and now it's happening again on a new laptop and I don't remember what I did to fix it. Both have keyboard repeat set to the same, fast repeat, and delay until repeat short.

I would disagree with the assessment that it's not surprising because I don't accidentally type "c" multiple times (or any other character for that matter) as I'm typing this. This problem ONLY occurs when using the merge clipboard feature using Alfred.  Basically I only do Command + C one time, and I get the contents merged, and it's quite frustrating to have to do a copy over and over.

 

[Vero]

@drwatson Here are a few scenarios where clipboard may merge when it shouldn't:

• Another clipboard modifying app running concurrently
• Using an app that has its own clipboard feature (e.g. iTerm)
• Using a keyboard modifier app that may be triggering keys in the background
• Non-Apple third-party keyboard (I recall a Logitech keyboard that was triggering extra keys)

Take a look at whether it's happening only in one app, or in any app (TextEdit is the ideal testing app as it's such a simple native one)

 

Cheers,
Vero

 

[drwatson]

 

10 hours ago, Vero said:

Using an app that has its own clipboard feature (e.g. iTerm)

 

That was it! `Copy to pasteboard on selection` was disabled on the working machine. Thank you

[Vero]

For anyone encountering the same issue as @drwatson  in the future, the best first step to troubleshooting clipboard merge mis-triggering is to work out whether it happens only in one app, or in all apps. Or whether it happens only when particular other third-party apps (e.g. other clipboard tools) are running.

 

In this case, it would've only happened with iTerm in focus, so can be narrowed down accordingly

 

Cheers,
Vero