Reputation: 3113

Copy paste text into iOS simulator

This must be documented somewhere, but I can't find it.

In my app using the iPad simulator there is a textfield into which I want the user to paste text. In the real world the user will copy the text from Safari address into the textfield. But I am trying to do that in the ios ipad simulator, but with only partial results.

After I reRUN the app, I can immediately paste text into the textfield with the Mac's Edit|Paste Text menu or with Shift-Command-V, (but not with just Edit|Paste, but that's Ok). The need for the Shift is annoying but I can live with it.

But then if I try to copy another URL on the Mac and then again, Edit|Paste Text or even use the Paste bubble on the simulator, I don't get the new text, but the original text.

Is that common? Is that a feature of the simulator that it is not connected live to the clipboard on the host computer?

Upvotes: 188

Answers (25)

Alex

Reputation: 1601

If you are using Better Touch Tool(BTT), you can create CMD+V action for iOS Simulator and run an apple script that will do the past clipboard

tell application "System Events"
    set theText to get the clipboard as text
    repeat with aCharacter in characters of theText
        keystroke aCharacter
        delay 0.05
    end repeat
end tell

I hope it will help somebody.

P.S don't forget to bump the answer if it's helped 👍

UPD: script updated

Upvotes: 2

CTS_AE

Reputation: 14903

I was trying to get around the permissions box that pops up when you try to paste.

This is what seemed to work for me:

Enable MacOS & iOS Settings

In MacOS's Simulator Menu -> Edit -> enable "Automatically Sync Pasteboard".
In the simulator/iOS goto the Home Screen -> Settings App.
For each app you're testing it should be listed at the bottom of the settings app. For me it lists the apps right after the Developer option.
Go into all the developer apps that are listed that you want to allow pasting into.
There will be an option "Paste from Other Apps".
Change this to "Allow"; instead of the default of "Ask".

Notes

You will have to do this for all new simulators, updates, and when your app is seen as a new app or for any other new apps you develop.

Upvotes: 2

Kanchan Pal

Reputation: 367

Please install iOS 16.2 simulator and it should work in this OS if ticking/unticking automatically sync pasteboard is not working for you.

iOS 14.5: Not working iOS 15.4: Not working iOS 16.2: Working

Upvotes: 6

romin21

Reputation: 1651

Untick and tick again "Automatically Snyc Pasteboard". Then quit the simulator and re-open it. This is what fixed it for me.

Upvotes: 12

niwim

Reputation: 31

This is a solution that might work if you are working with React Native.

I ran into this issue now with my M1 Pro Macbook. It started when I updated Xcode to 14.0 before that everything worked fine.

What seems to be the issue is that I'm running terminal in Rosetta. When starting the simulator via npx react-native run-ios this starts the simulator in Rosetta as well (I'm assuming here cannot prove it).

Solution: Make sure Xcode is running natively and running the project from Xcode instead of Terminal, the Copy-paste functionality should work again.

Upvotes: 1

Alexandre Duros

Reputation: 976

Facing the same issue on Apple M2 and Simulator 13.4.1, I was digging into my OS logs and it seems that there are some issues in the Simulator - I guess - since I can read that it is not able to retrieve the content of the pasteboard, stored in a file. I can still open myself the file and confirm the content of the pasteboard is OK.

After request access to the corresponding file while pasting (either using "Paste" menu or classic cmd+V), I can read something like :

Upload preparation for claim XXXX completed with error: 
Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain 
Code=256 "Impossible d’ouvrir le fichier « bbbb »."
UserInfo={
NSURL=file:///Users/username/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/XXXX/data/Library/Caches/com.apple.Pasteboard/ZZZZZ/, 
NSFilePath=/Users/username/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/XXXX/data/Library/Caches/com.apple.Pasteboard/ZZZZZ/data/Library/Caches/com.apple.Pasteboard/aaaaa/bbbb, 
NSUnderlyingError=0x6000005105d0 
{Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-10817 "(null)"}}

So I guess, Apple has just some adjustments still on-going on the Simulator. Thus, neither disabling/enabling Auto-sync nor forcing sync of the pasteboard worked in my case.

Upvotes: 1

Aashutosh Prakash

Reputation: 133

After trying a lot and nothing work on M1 Macs and simulator above 14 I have taken the different route to solve problem.

Apple script to type the text in simulator.

tell application "System Events"
set texttosay to "Sample Text"
display dialog "Text to type:" default answer "white: "
set texttosay to the text returned of the result
repeat
    delay 2
    repeat 1 times
        keystroke texttosay
        delay 1
        keystroke return
    end repeat
    exit repeat
end repeat
end tell

Steps:

Run above script in apple scripts and paste the text in dialogue box you want to type in simulator.
click the input-box to populate the value.

Hope that helps in your problem.

Thanks

Upvotes: 10

Mor4eza

Reputation: 305

Just Disable and then re-enable the Automatically Sync Pasteboard option from Edit menu, fixed my problem.

Upvotes: 9

Digital

Reputation: 522

Nothing from the above solutions worked for me. I am using M1 Apple. The thing that worked was this thread https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/74970

In short, if you are using iOS 14.0 to build the app, you will have the above issues.

In order to solve it, what I did was installing iOS 13.7 in xCode by going to Preferences -> Components -> iOS 13.7 -> then rebuild the app in the xCode.

Upvotes: 6

bgarr

Reputation: 43

None of these solutions worked for me. I'm using Simulator 11.4. And after trying each of these, I realized all I needed to do was copy something on my Mac using Command + C, and then in the simulator text field, simply hold down the mouse click for an extra second or two, and the paste menu popped up automatically, and worked great.

Upvotes: -2

Mansur76

Reputation: 59

Similar thing happened to me and I found a strange workaround, it may help anyone else that may come across the same issue. Try the following steps:

Disable and then re-enable the Automatically Sync Pasteboard option, it's found under the Edit menu on the Simulator
Copy the text you want from your Mac
Paste the text again on your Mac on a text editor like Atom or even your browsers Address Bar
Select all the text Cmd+A and then cut/copy Cmd+X/Cmd+C
You should now be able to paste the text on the simulator

Upvotes: 10

Kirill

Reputation: 889

Xcode 10.0+:

Turning the Automatic Pasteboard Sync off and then back on again solved the issue.

You might have to do that multiple times. Sometimes it takes a while to trigger it for some reason.

(Edit -> Automatic Pasteboard Sync)

Upvotes: 18

Nikolay Shubenkov

Reputation: 3233

sometimes you just need to select Hardware -> reset content and settings in simulator menu. then all works automatically as easy and transparent as working in MacOS with other applications

Upvotes: 0

Daniel Lizik

Reputation: 3144

I updated to os x 10.13.6 and xcode 10.1 and there is an added menu in edit

click get pasteboard then you will be able to paste via the paste tooltip in simulator

Upvotes: 10

Eliram

Reputation: 616

In a new emulator, I got no "paste" option and sync did not work for the simulator. It appears that in the simulator you MUST copy something to the internal clipboard before the sync actually works.

Upvotes: 4

hardanger

Reputation: 2627

I found that even with Edit > Automatically sync pasteboard ticked, the feature didn't work.

However, simply unticking and then reticking this option fixed the feature!

Hope it works for someone.

Upvotes: 196

Chathurka

Reputation: 625

Please click "Automatically sync pasteboard" option in Simulator edit option.

Upvotes: 20

wj2061

Reputation: 6885

⌘ + V : When iOS simulator is in front,copy the contents of the OS X clipboard over to iOS, but doesn't paste it. Again, this works for both text and images.
So you need to do as follows:
1.copy text anywhere in your macOS except iOS simulator.
2.in iOS simulator, click ⌘ + V, copy text from macOS clipboard to iOS simulator's clipborad.
3.in iOS simulator, TextField or TextView click -> Edit ->Paste.

Upvotes: -1

Rishab

Reputation: 1957

This is what I found.

Copy text from mac.
In simulator open safari and highlight the address bar by clicking it.
Press Cmd + V
Click once on address bar.
Paste drop down shall appear.
Tap on paste.

Shift + Cmd + V works great too.

Upvotes: -1

JerryZhou

Reputation: 5206

Three steps:(The key point is make sure that the "Paste" help menu is keeping visible when you use " ⌘ + V".)

make sure you select the point you want to past in the simulator, and the editMenu with "Paste" is show.
use keyboard on mac," ⌘ + V", to paste the text into simulator clipboard.
click the "Paste" on editMenu that show above, to paste the text into simulator textField.

Upvotes: 1

Ohmy

Reputation: 2221

This works for me. On Safari version 8.0.3 and IOs simulator version 8.1

Copy text from Safari - highlight text then cmd-v or Edit>Copy.
In Ios Simulator click Edit>Paste.
On TextField or TextView right click then select Paste.

Upvotes: -1

Bill Patterson

Reputation: 2558

Be careful to avoid conflating the mac's clipboard with the simulator's clipboard. They are not the same.

The simulator is simulating an iOS device, with it's own iOS clipboard which apps running on that device (simulator) use via the iOS pup-up select-all/copy/paste UI items.

Completely separate from that: your mac has it's own clipboard and content. The Simulator program running on your mac provides the Edit > Paste Text menu item. The program implements that menu item by accessing your mac clipboard and types the text into the simulator as if the user used the keyboard. The iOS clipboard is neither accessed nor affected by the Simulator application's Edit menu functions.

Update: As of Xcode 6, you need to choose the Edit > Paste menu item in the iOS Simulator (this transfers the data between the Mac clipboard and the iOS Clipboard), then tap in the field in the simulator and tap the "Paste" bubble.

In your question you don't specify which "Safari" you're copying the URL from. It could be the mac safari application or the simulator's safari app. Doing a copy from the mac safari program goes to the mac clipboard, doing a copy from the safari app goes to the iOS clipboard inside the simulator.

I think your issues are coming from confusing the two, thinking there's one clipboard everything is sharing.

Upvotes: 110

Rajashekar

Reputation: 629

What worked for me is this.

1) copy text from Mac

2) In simulator do edit->paste or Command V (I think this copies the text from mac clipboard to iOS Simulator clipboard).

3) Highlight the textfield in simulator and then do command + Shift + V.

Upvotes: 12

Shane

Reputation: 836

Copy text on the mac, then click the text field in the simulator and press

Shift Command V

Upvotes: 68

Adil Malik

Reputation: 6357

Sometimes it's very difficult to type long URLs in iOS simulator. There should be some way to copy URL from Max OS to iOS text field. Here's how you can do it:

Copy some text from Mac
Open the simulator and click on a text field where you want to paste the text
Now in Simulator menu click on Edit -> Paste Text

and that's it. Your text from the Mac OS copy buffer should now be there in iOS simulator's text field.

Upvotes: 1

Copy paste text into iOS simulator

Answers (25)

Enable MacOS & iOS Settings

Notes

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