vim.useSystemClipboard broken

[nrsimha]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

When I enable useSystemClipboard in settings:

"vim.useSystemClipboard": true

Pasting starts to behave strange.

Expected: when I press yy and then p it should paste while line below one. P should paste line above current one.

What is happening: when I press yy and then p it paste whole line from place of the cursor on same line.

In Visual Studio Code it works as expected.

Steps to Reproduce

1. enable vim plugin
2. add setting "vim.useSystemClipboard": true
3. copy whole line by pressing yy
4. press p while you are in middle of line
5. it paste immediatelly agter cursor instead of on whole new line below cursor

Expected Behavior

yy and p should paste whole line below current one
yy and P should paste whole line above current one
dd and then p should paste whole line below

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.0.69 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: 63fcac100bd5d5749f2a98aa47d65f6eca61db30
Date: 2025-11-07T18:21:29.650Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

[deanrie]

Hey, thanks for the report. I tested this in both VS Code and Cursor and saw the same broken behavior in each, so it’s likely a VSCodeVim extension bug rather than something specific to Cursor.

Here’s a workaround you can use while the maintainers fix it. Add this to your settings:

"vim.useSystemClipboard": true,
"vim.normalModeKeyBindingsNonRecursive": [
  {
    "before": ["p"],
    "after": ["\"", "0", "p"]
  },
  {
    "before": ["P"],
    "after": ["\"", "0", "P"]
  },
  {
    "before": ["<leader>", "p"],
    "after": ["\"", "+", "p"]
  }
]

This remaps:

• p and P to use the yank register 0, which preserves correct line-wise paste behavior
• <leader>p to explicitly paste from the system clipboard when needed

Let me know if the workaround helps!

[nrsimha]

Strange in my vscode it works (but maybe I don’t have latest version).

It works to paste from clipboard, but when I tried to do same for yy and dd it doesn’t work as it pastes whole line inside of current line.

I use system clipboard so I can easy switch between clipboard items in different apps through Alfred (clipboard addon).

[nrsimha]

What fixed issue for me was to downgrade vscodevim to v1.30.1 by clicking gear icon and “Install Specific Version…“

Now it works as before.