[BUG] Pasting stopped working in 0.6.11

[Ragnar-D5]

Before You Submit

Please search existing issues to avoid duplicates. Your bug may already be reported! Right now it's just me maintaining this project so many issues can be overwhelming! Help me out by checking first.

Bug Description

After updating from 0.6.10 to 0.6.11, no paste method actually inputs any text, although the clipboard is being modified. I downloaded both Appimages and confirmed this on my system.

System Information

0.6.11

Operating System:

Linux Bazzite:stable

CPU:

AMD Ryzen 5 5500

GPU:
AMD Radeon RX 6600

[cjpais]

Thanks for letting me know. I suspect I know the reason why, would you mind providing a log? It will help confirm

You can get them via ctrl+shift+d to find the directory

[Ragnar-D5]

handy.log

The issue seems to be ydotool

[cjpais]

yep, this is more or less what I expected to see. it's a result of #557 which I pulled in

I think we will need to add some fallback if ydotool is not working or errors. Pulling in @manimohans to help fix this if possible. I suspect the best way forward is if there is an error to fallback to another method instead of just not trying to paste anything else. I'd guess this is easy to test by killing the ydotool daemon. If they are not able to help soon I will try and write a fix and try to get help from you to test if you don't mind

Possibly for you, if you start the ydotool daemon it might help. It's also possible there is an error in the ydotool detection logic

[Ragnar-D5]

After starting the daemon it still seems to fail

handy.log

Please feel free to ask me for help with testing, because I am absolutely in love with this program.

[cjpais]

Great thank you! If you want to test #580 I would love any feedback on it from the linux side. I know that the paste won't work for you, but I will get it fixed in the next day or two if you're able to help! I want to stabilize things as much as possible and people like you make it possible! Thank you

[gitalm]

Thanks for the great work. I've still the problem with 0.70 version.

[gabenasci]

On Linux GNOME/Wayland, I wasn't able to paste in apps running Wayland (only X11/XWayland apps).
I was able to fix the pasting issue by installing and setting up the ydotoold daemon following these steps from @jacobwhall #557 (comment)

What finally made it work was adding my user to the input group and rebooting:

sudo usermod -aG input $USER

It should now work using Paste Method: Direct in the Handy settings.

[cjpais]

Thanks for the confirmation @gabenasci

If you don't mind, would you want to submit a PR with README changes just so we can document this for other users before having to go into issues? I'll do this if you don't get a chance, but it'll be much faster if someone else submits a PR, as I have to deal with a bunch of other stuff as well.

[gabenasci]

Thanks for the confirmation @gabenasci

If you don't mind, would you want to submit a PR with README changes just so we can document this for other users before having to go into issues? I'll do this if you don't get a chance, but it'll be much faster if someone else submits a PR, as I have to deal with a bunch of other stuff as well.

Can do

[GodTGamer]

Fellow Bazzite-KDE User here. @gabenasci way works, thank you.

[suuuehgi]

Fellow Bazzite-KDE User here. @gabenasci way works, thank you.

I would like to elaborate a bit on this:

ydotool comes with the daemon ydotoold but it lacks a systemd service file / is not started automatically.

We can fix that by manually creating a service file ~/.config/systemd/user/ydotoold.service

[Unit]
Description=ydotool daemon
After=graphical-session.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ydotoold
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

and activate it using systemctl --user enable --now ydotoold.service.

Yet this will fail, as we / the user needs access rights to the device /dev/uinput.

systemctl --user status ydotoold.service will show something like this:

Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2026-02-10 17:58:39 CET; 2s ago
[...]
Process: <id> ExecStart=/usr/bin/ydotoold (code=exited, status=2)`.

DO NOT ADD YOURSELF TO THE input GROUP, AS IT IS OFTEN RECOMMENDED!

Adding yourself / a user to the input group allows to access all user input, including keystrokes, mouse input and whatever to all programs. This is a bad idea for obvious reasons.

ydotool just needs access to /dev/uinput. That is a write-only kernel module interface that allows userspace programs to create and control virtual input devices.

To allow access, run the following commands:

echo 'KERNEL=="uinput", TAG+="uaccess"' | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/50-uinput.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

Your ydotoold.service should now be up and running.

[Foul]

v0.7.5 still no direct typing for me... without any trick upper..

[cjpais]

@Foul, what OS, what did you try? More details always help so we can track what's going on.

[anand951]

I am having same issue. I am trying to paste into Claude Code. It just says "No images found" - strange.
Anyways, I am on Mint Linux. Appreciate getting this fixed. I am on version 0.7.5