No copy/paste behavior

[pwflint (Peter W Flint)]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Agent input field on desktop IDE no longer accepts pasted content from either a dictation app or via keyboard shortcut (CMND-V or (new?) CTRL-Y). Content must be pasted manually via the Edit→Paste menu item.

This behavior as of latest update.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Update Cursor to latest version. Click into prompt window.
2. Press your dictation shortcut and begin speaking.
3. End your dictation.
4. Stare at prompt window and wait for text to appear.
5. Open your dictation app thinking its your error.
6. See your content in your dictation app. Copy it with your favorite keybinding.
7. Paste your content inside Cursor’s prompt field with your favorite keybinding. Stare baffled while no text appears.
8. Repeat step 7 several more times until you decide to open the Edit menu and see that the keybinding has changed.
9. Paste using the new keybinding. Stare baffled while no text appears.
10. Repeat step 9 several more times because surely a Class A VC-backed frontier product could not blunder in something so basic.
11. Restart your machine because its definitely you and not them.
12. Reopen Cursor and repeat steps 1-10.
13. Open Edit and click “Paste”. Your content now appears in the prompt field.
14. Discover it is them and not you and file a bug report.

Expected Behavior

When I end my dictated prompt it should appear in the chat prompt window.
When I copy text from another application with CMND-C and use CMND-V it should appear in the chat prompt window, because that is a universal command across MacOS.
When I use Cursor’s arbitrarily custom CTRL-Y keybinding, my pasted content should appear in the chat prompt window.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 3.14.27 (Universal)
VS Code Extension API: 1.128.0
Commit: 047548b00c1a079373d74d00183f32510a4a41e0
Date: 2026-08-04T03:29:11.183Z
Layout: Agent Window
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 40.10.3
Chromium: 144.0.7559.236
Node.js: 24.15.0
V8: 14.4.258.32-electron.0
xterm.js: 6.1.0-beta.291
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

Additional Information

Does this stop me from using Cursor? Technically, no. Does it make it unusable in terms of loss of efficiency and encourage me to shift all my projects over to Claude Code? Emphatically, yes.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

[deanrie]

Hey, thanks for the detailed report and the step by step drama, it was a great read.

The main clue is that in the Edit menu, Paste is bound to Ctrl+Y, not Cmd+V. On a clean 3.14.27 install it should be Cmd+V. Ctrl+Y yank is a classic Emacs binding, so it looks like you have a keymap extension installed, something like Emacs keybindings, that remaps paste. Combined with the macOS Agent Window, this is exactly what makes Cmd+V do nothing in the prompt field. Dictation apps insert text via a synthetic Cmd+V, so they break for the same reason.

Workarounds that should work right now:

• Cmd+Shift+V paste as plain text, it pastes once and avoids the problematic path.
• Right click then Paste, or Edit then Paste, you already found this.
• If you temporarily disable the keymap extension, Paste should go back to Cmd+V.

To confirm the cause, can you share:

• Your list of installed keymap extensions, to see if you have Emacs or Vim keybindings.
• Your keybindings.json via Cmd+Shift+P then Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON).
• Whether Cmd+Shift+V and right click then Paste work in the input field.

With that, we can figure out what exactly is intercepting paste. Let me know how it goes.

[pwflint (Peter W Flint)]

There are no keybinding extensions installed on my machine.

Cmd+Shift+V and R-click both work.

Your response does not explain why the Ctrl+Y keybinding doesn’t work, or why dictated input doesn’t autopaste.

I cannot find the keybindings.json file via the command palette pathway you describe, cmd+shift+P.

[pwflint (Peter W Flint)]

Okay, further investigation. The report above is for Agents UI in Cursor Desktop. IDE retains cmd+v shortcut but other keybindings are all over the place.