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
Update Cursor to latest version. Click into prompt window.
Press your dictation shortcut and begin speaking.
End your dictation.
Stare at prompt window and wait for text to appear.
Open your dictation app thinking its your error.
See your content in your dictation app. Copy it with your favorite keybinding.
Paste your content inside Cursor’s prompt field with your favorite keybinding. Stare baffled while no text appears.
Repeat step 7 several more times until you decide to open the Edit menu and see that the keybinding has changed.
Paste using the new keybinding. Stare baffled while no text appears.
Repeat step 9 several more times because surely a Class A VC-backed frontier product could not blunder in something so basic.
Restart your machine because its definitely you and not them.
Reopen Cursor and repeat steps 1-10.
Open Edit and click “Paste”. Your content now appears in the prompt field.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for coming back with details, that helps a lot. Since there are no keymap extensions, and Cmd+Shift+V and right click work, my first idea (Emacs bindings) is not the case. Your screenshots show something else: in the Edit menu the shortcuts look corrupted, like Copy [^[ W], Paste ⌃Y, Select All [^X H], Undo ⌃⇧−. On a clean 3.14.27 install it should not look like that, and it is not caused by your settings.
While we investigate, these workarounds should work for paste:
Cmd+Shift+V (paste as plain text) you confirmed this works
Right click then Paste, or Edit then Paste
To narrow it down, can you help with two things:
Open keybindings.json. In the command palette Cmd+Shift+P, the command name is Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON). If the file is empty [], please say so, that is useful too.
Send a screenshot from the Keyboard Shortcuts UI Cmd+K Cmd+S with a filter for paste and copy. I want to see what it shows as the binding source Default, User, or Extension.
About dictation: most macOS dictation apps insert text using a synthetic Cmd+V, so they break for the same reason as manual Cmd+V in the Agents input. Once the main paste path is fixed, dictation should start working again too.
Let me know what you see in keybindings.json, and we can take the next step.
Hey, thanks for confirming this. Having a second report with screenshots helps a lot.
This isn’t something in your setup. On a clean 3.14.27 macOS install, the Agents Window Edit menu should have Paste bound to Cmd+V, not Cmd+Shift+V, so the accelerator ending up wrong here is exactly the issue we’re tracking. Since it also blocks the shortcuts UI from remapping Paste, there’s no clean keyboard fix on your side right now.
Workarounds that should hold for now:
Right-click → Paste, or Edit → Paste in the menu bar
Cmd+Shift+V (paste as plain text). Worth trying since your Edit menu shows Paste currently living there
On Wispr Flow, dictation apps insert text via a synthetic Cmd+V, so they break for the same reason as manual Cmd+V. Once the paste path is fixed, dictation should start working again too. There’s no separate dictation fix needed.
I’ve passed this to the team with your details. No ETA yet, but I’ll post here when there’s an update. If you’re on the Agent Window layout, one more thing to check: does Cmd+V still work in the classic editor or IDE window outside the Agents Window? That’d help narrow down where the accelerator is going wrong.
Thanks for following through. The screenshots answer it. I can see keybindings.json is empty, except for cmd+i for composerMode.agent, and in Keyboard Shortcuts inside the Agents Window there are no paste or copy commands at all. That confirms it’s not your settings. On a clean 3.14.27 this shouldn’t happen.
So this is exactly the issue we’re tracking. In the Agents Window on macOS, the Paste accelerator in the native Edit menu gets mapped to the wrong place, so Cmd+V doesn’t work in the prompt input, and the Keyboard Shortcuts UI doesn’t let you remap Paste back. Dictation (Wispr Flow) breaks for the same reason, it inserts text via a synthetic Cmd+V. We don’t need a separate dictation fix. Once paste is fixed, dictation will work too.
I’ve shared all the details with the team. No ETA yet, but I’ll post here as soon as there’s an update.
