Clipboard History - IMessage Images - Not pasting properly

[gswilderman]

Alred does not seem to copy/paste MAC-OS IMessage images correctly..... In IMessage, I click on a photo that someone sent me. And click copy... It shows up in Alred Clipboard history... but when I paste it, it doesn't seem to actually paste the photo/image... seems almost more like a link. All other apps that I copy and paste using Alfred clipboard history seem to work fine.... just not images/photos in IMessage.....

 

If I just copy an image in IMessage and do a regular paste (CMD-V), it works fine.

 

If I open the image in preview and copy it from there, it seems to work.....

 

Any thoughts or suggestions? I have Paste clipboard manager and it doesn't have this issue. Just trying to avoid using another utility.

 

Below is what it looks like when I paste a copied image from Alred Clipboard history..... 

When I bring up Alred Clipboard History, this is what it says for the Copied IMessage image....

File : IMG_1234.Jpg

(vs......  Image : IMG_5678.Jpg")

 

 

Mac OS Big Sur

2016 Macbook Pro

Alfred 4.3

 

Thanks

GW

[deanishe]

You could have added the explanation I gave you to your bug report, instead of requiring people to figure out the problem all over again.

 

TL;DR: Alfred is only remembering the filepath and not the image data, but because it's a temporary file, it tends to disappear before you get around to pasting it.

 

 

[gswilderman]

3 hours ago, deanishe said:

You could have added the explanation I gave you to your bug report, instead of requiring people to figure out the problem all over again.

 

TL;DR: Alfred is only remembering the filepath and not the image data, but because it's a temporary file, it tends to disappear before you get around to pasting it.

 

 

When you copy an image in Messages.app, it puts both TIFF image data and the filepath of a temporary file on the clipboard.

 

What's happening is that Alfred is only remembering the filepath, while your other clipboard history manager is saving both representations. That would normally be fine, but because it's only a temporary file, it's disappearing before you've pasted it. And that's what you're seeing when you paste and just get an icon and filename: a file that doesn't exist.

 

I'd say this is a bug in Alfred. It's the nature of temporary files to disappear, so I'd argue Alfred shouldn't discard other representations if it would be left with only the path of a file in a designated temporary directory.

[Andrew]

This is very interesting behaviour from iMessage, and it doesn't surprise me, as iMessage is quirky in quite a few different ways.

 

While this isn't a "quick fix" in Alfred, as he currently singles out specific types, and doesn't store broad data in the history, one workaround is to turn off storing files in Alfred's clipboard history (if you're not using them often). For various reasons, Alfred prioritises files above images in the history check, so disabling files will get the image correctly from iMessages.

 

In the further future, it's very likely that Alfred will have a more broad and intelligent clipboard history which will be able to work with this kind of issue.

[Mr Pennyworth]

4 hours ago, Andrew said:

This is very interesting behaviour from iMessage

Cleanshot (a screenshotting tool) too does something similar (puts file as well as image data onto the pasteboard)

 

4 hours ago, Andrew said:

one workaround is to turn off storing files in Alfred's clipboard history

Thanks sooooo much for pointing this out!!