# Reported issues for Clipboard Pod holds 19 of 26 problems reported by people outside the maintainer team. Issues filed by the project's own owners, members and collaborators are excluded entirely — a maintainer's release checklist is not a warning to a prospective user. Back to [Clipboard](/mcp/clipboard). ## Most discussed ### X11/Wayland PRIMARY selection support ## Summary Expose the X11 PRIMARY selection (the middle-click / select-text-to-copy buffer) as a separate read source. Wayland has an analogous primary selection on most compositors. Today `clipboard_paste` only reads the CLIPBOARD selection. ## Why this is worth building Power users on Linux rely heavily on PRIMARY for "select-and-paste" workflows — it captures whatever text is currently selected, with no explicit copy step. Tools like Vim, terminal emulators, web browsers, and IDEs all popu [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/110) · 2026-05-05 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### Markdown to rich-text write: paste as formatted in Slack, Gmail, Notion ## Summary Let the model write markdown that pastes as rich text in apps that prefer HTML/RTF (Slack, Gmail, Notion, Word, Google Docs). Closes the read/write asymmetry for formatted text: today we read HTML tables and rich content beautifully but only write plain. ## Why this is worth building The model genuinely cannot do this on its own. Slack/Gmail/etc. promote HTML over plain text when both are on the clipboard, and there is no way to put HTML on the clipboard from the model side without [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/109) · 2026-05-05 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### Image write: put PNG/JPEG on the clipboard ## Summary Add the ability for the model to write an image to the system clipboard. Today `clipboard_paste` returns images, but the model has no way to put one back. This closes the read/write asymmetry for binary content. ## Why this is worth building This is something the model genuinely cannot do without us: - The host model can produce or fetch images via other tools, but cannot reach the OS pasteboard. - A user generating a chart, fetching a remote image, or extracting one from a PDF of [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/108) · 2026-05-05 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### bug: pr-labels-ci.yml contains literal empty ${{ }} in shell comments (parser hazard) ## Summary `.github/workflows/pr-labels-ci.yml` contains the literal sequence of an empty GitHub Actions expression inside two shell comments. GHA substitutes those expressions inside `run:` blocks *before* the shell sees them, **including sequences inside shell comments**. When the workflow is invoked via `workflow_dispatch` (or on a fresh-repo registration push-validation path), the queue-time parser treats the empty expression as malformed and returns: > Failed to queue workflow run: Invali [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/91) · 2026-04-20 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### clipboard_copy does not validate mime_type with _MIME_RE ## Problem `clipboard_copy` (`server.py:386-411`) lowercases `mime_type` and checks the binary-prefix list, but does not validate against `_MIME_RE`. By contrast, `clipboard_read_raw` (`server.py:307-312`) does validate. The unvalidated value reaches `wl-copy --type ` / `xclip -target ` on Linux backends. ## Impact Not exploitable - `asyncio.create_subprocess_exec` blocks shell injection. This is a consistency gap and a hygiene issue: the regex exists, the read path uses it, the w [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/75) · 2026-04-14 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### macOS list_formats can return duplicate text/plain entries ## Problem `_UTI_TO_MIME` maps both `public.utf8-plain-text` and `public.plain-text` to `text/plain`. macOS often has both UTIs on the pasteboard simultaneously after a normal copy. The result list is not deduplicated. ``` clipboard.py:313 ``` ```python return [_UTI_TO_MIME.get(t, t) for t in native] ``` ## Impact `clipboard_list_formats` reports inflated counts to the user (e.g., "3 formats" when there are really 2). The downstream image-format scan in `clipboard_paste` is unaffected. ## [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/74) · 2026-04-14 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### Slack format description in clipboard_paste.md is stale ## Problem `src/mcp_clipboard/instructions/clipboard_paste.md` line 32 still describes the slack format as: > *bold* header + space-aligned data in a monospace code block PR #50 changed the implementation to put the header inside the code block with a dashed underline (to avoid Slack mrkdwn escaping issues). The instruction file was not updated, so the host LLM sees a stale description. ## Suggested fix Update line 32 to: > "slack": monospace code block with dashed-underline header row (av [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/73) · 2026-04-14 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### Help wanted: Claude Code testers mcp-clipboard was built for Claude Code — it works around the [terminal padding bug](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/4686) that corrupts long commands when you copy them from Claude Code's output. If you use Claude Code, even 10 minutes of testing would be a huge help. ### Setup ```bash claude mcp add clipboard -- uvx mcp-clipboard ``` That's it. Claude Code will discover the tools automatically. ### Tests #### Clipboard padding workaround 1. Ask Claude Code to generate a [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/10) · 2026-04-04 · open · outside contributor · 4 comments ## Most recent ### Phase 2: port _windows_read_image and _windows_write_image to pywin32 Tracking issue for the follow-up to PR #146. PR #146 (the Windows backend pywin32 refactor) is scoped to text formats only -- text/plain, text/html, text/rtf, image/svg+xml, multi-format atomic writes, and list_formats. The image read/write paths (`_windows_read_image`, `_windows_write_image` in `src/mcp_clipboard/clipboard.py`) **stay on the PowerShell-subprocess backend** in Phase 1 because porting them needs DIB to PNG conversion which is enough additional work to deserve its own PR. This i [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/147) · 2026-05-09 · open · outside contributor · 0 comments ### clipboard_copy(mime_type=image/svg+xml) silently no-ops on CD/Windows in v2.6.1 ## Summary On Claude Desktop for Windows running mcp-clipboard v2.6.1 (confirmed via `uvx mcp-clipboard --version`), `clipboard_copy(content=, mime_type=image/svg+xml)` silently fails to write to the clipboard. The clipboard's existing contents are unchanged; subsequent reads via `clipboard_paste`, `clipboard_read_raw image/svg+xml`, or `clipboard_list_formats` show no SVG present, only whatever was on the clipboard before the call. ## Environment - mcp-clipboard: 2.6.1 (PyPI, ser [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/143) · 2026-05-09 · open · outside contributor · 0 comments ### clipboard_copy loses non-ASCII bytes on CD/Windows in v2.6.1 ## Summary On Claude Desktop for Windows running mcp-clipboard v2.6.1 (confirmed via `uvx mcp-clipboard --version`), `clipboard_copy(content=..., mime_type=text/plain)` loses non-ASCII bytes. Em dash (U+2014), curly quotes (U+2018, U+2019, U+201C, U+201D), ellipsis (U+2026), CJK ideographs, Arabic, and emoji all fail to round-trip; the symptom on read-back is either ASCII normalization or the classic Windows codepage `?` substitution. ## Environment - mcp-clipboard: 2.6.1 (PyPI, served via `u [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/142) · 2026-05-09 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### Comprehensive Windows integration test suite (run on real Windows, not Linux mocks) ## Context After #129 (UTF-8 stdin encoding) and #136 (SVG read path) both shipped fixes that escaped Linux-mocked unit tests and only surfaced via QEMU Windows guest testing, it's time to design a comprehensive Windows test suite that runs against a real Windows OS. Current state: `tests/test_server.py` mocks every Windows code path through `unittest.mock.patch` on `_run` / `_run_with_stdin`, so the actual PowerShell behavior is never exercised in CI. The `integration-x11` job runs on Linux an [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/137) · 2026-05-07 · open · outside contributor · 0 comments ### SVG clipboard round-trip fails on Windows: clipboard_paste returns 'Clipboard is empty' after clipboard_copy(mime_type=image/svg+xml) ## Repro On a Windows host (originally reported on a QEMU Windows guest): 1. `clipboard_copy(content=..., mime_type="image/svg+xml")` — reports success: "Copied 307 characters". 2. `clipboard_paste()` — returns "Clipboard is empty". Debug log on the read side shows: `DEBUG Image read failed: Unsupported image type: image/svg+xml` from `server.py`. ## Why this happens Three layered gaps in the read path: 1. **`_windows_read` (`clipboard.py:404`)** — only handles `text/html`, `tex [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/136) · 2026-05-07 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### macOS pbcopy text-write paths share the locale-dependent encoding-mismatch class with the fixed Windows bug (#129) ## Context Companion to #129 / #131. While auditing the Windows UTF-8 stdin-encoding fix, the same *shape* of risk turned up in two macOS write paths. Filing now so it isn't lost; not assigning a priority above `low` because there's no live repro. ## Risk surface `pbcopy` reads stdin and converts the byte stream into an `NSString` to place on `NSPasteboard`. That conversion uses `LC_CTYPE` / `LANG` from the subprocess environment to pick the encoding. If the subprocess inherits a non-UTF-8 lo [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/133) · 2026-05-07 · open · outside contributor · 0 comments ### Install ergonomics: smooth out the uvx install path ## Context While discussing the image-write feature earlier, the maintainer noted that getting mcp-clipboard installed via `uvx` was painful. This issue captures that as a follow-up so the friction points can be enumerated, prioritized, and addressed. This is a placeholder to land the conversation; it should be expanded with concrete reproduction steps once someone has the bandwidth to walk through a fresh install on each supported platform. ## What to capture For each of Linux (X11 + Waylan [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/130) · 2026-05-07 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### Windows clipboard_copy corrupts non-ASCII characters (em dash and other UTF-8 multi-byte chars) ## Problem When `clipboard_copy` writes text containing non-ASCII characters on Windows, the bytes are corrupted by the time they land on the clipboard. Pasting into Notepad shows mojibake instead of the original characters. **Observed:** Copying a string containing an em dash (U+2014) followed by space and "C" produced `[Cö C` (or similar garbled bytes) on paste, instead of `— C`. **Platform:** Windows (verified on a QEMU Windows guest). **Workaround:** Stick to ASCII-safe characters (e.g. [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/129) · 2026-05-07 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### Register mcp-clipboard with the MCP Server registry (server.json + publish-registry workflow) > Cross-agent handoff from Dev session (cmeans/mcp-synology side, 2026-05-05). ## Why mcp-clipboard ships to PyPI (`mcp-clipboard 2.3.0` published 2026-05-03) but isn't listed in the official MCP Server registry at `registry.modelcontextprotocol.io`. mcp-synology was registered as part of v0.5.2 on 2026-05-01 and the same pattern can be transplanted here in one PR. The win: discoverability via the MCP registry directory plus the `mcp-publisher` schema validation gate that catches `server.json` [Read the thread](https://github.com/cmeans/mcp-clipboard/issues/114) · 2026-05-06 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments ### macOS osascript -e ARG_MAX hardening across _macos_write_typed and _macos_write_image ## Summary Both `_macos_write_typed` (text/html, text/rtf, image/svg+xml) and `_macos_write_image` (PNG/JPEG, #108 / #111) build the AppleScript body in Python and pass it via `osascript -e