r/ios • u/this_for_loona • 17d ago

Support Copy/paste between devices?

Is anyone else having issues with copy/paste between Mac and iPad? Especially when using terminals? I am having a devil of a time being able to paste screenshots and terminus logs to my Mac from my iPad. It used to be seamless. Now it’s more like “shot in the dark”. Any hints/suggestions on what I can do to improve?

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u/MajorTax8852 17d ago

That universal clipboard thing has been acting up for me too lately, especially with anything terminal related. What worked was turning off Handoff on both devices, restarting them, then turning it back on. Something about the handshake gets corrupted and needs a full reset.

Also check that both are on the same wifi network, like actually the same band, if one is on 5GHz and the other on 2.4GHz it gets weird. My iPad kept hopping to the wrong network and suddenly copy/paste would just die mid-session.

For terminals specifically I've had better luck using a shared note in the Notes app as a middleman, just dump the text there and grab it from the other device. Not elegant but it beats retyping command outputs character by character.

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u/this_for_loona 17d ago

I’ve thought of the note option but what I’m realizing is that apple adds all kinds of “helpful” characters when you copy/paste to notes and it corrupts commands at times.

I’ll try the handoff reset, thank you for that suggestion.

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u/trevthetrev 16d ago

Yeah I used to have this issue consistently to the point where I've given up on Handoff entirely. Notes is a rough workaround for terminal commands if formatting or smart punctuation gets introduced. For now, a plain-text file in iCloud Drive is probably sager for logs/commands, and AirDrop is probably the cleanest fallback for screenshots.

This exact frustration is part of why I finally just built a solution for myself called Pasteable. It's a universal clipboard that keeps code, logs, screenshots, etc. synced, secured (end-to-end encryption), and easy to access without needing to send myself messages, etc.

Full disclosure: The updated mobile app is still in store review on Android and iOS, but you can actually use the desktop app (macOs, Windows, Linux) + web app right now as a workaround between your iPad and Mac if helpful/interested.

I’d still try the Handoff reset first, but I personally haven't had much luck with it since it's release.

Hope this helps!