1849150 - Cannot paste text in WhatsApp on Firefox

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[okardec]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/116.0

Steps to reproduce:

It is not possible to paste any string content in WhatsApp web.
But only images are copied and pasted normally.
I encountered the problem on 2 computers with the same version of Firefox (116.0.3) after the August 16th update.

Actual results:

Firefox works apparently normal without crashes, it just doesn't paste the text from the clipboard.

Expected results:

It should work normally (I tested it in other browsers and it works, which can rule out an error in WhatsApp Web)

Comment 1

[Dianna Smith [:diannaS] - on Leave, back on August 9th]

I can recreate this on Windows 11 machine but not on Mac.
STR were the same as above. Opened WhatsApp Web (https://web.whatsapp.com/) on Firefox 116. (Linking of device to account and waiting for threads to load is required here). Copied text. Clicked the text field in a WhatsApp message thread. Pressed Ctrl+V on my keyboard. Nothing happened. (right click > paste didnt work either). No errors in web or browser console.

I ran mozregression but was getting different results everytime. I narrowed it down to occuring on 2023-06-20 on autoland.
After trying on each one manually
Last known good build on autoland 0a06638b1f498a3eb491480928ee50ec085bc188
First known bad build on autoland 2ad5c2418b372960126440af5aa568104de3bfb8

which is odd because it points to test changes but NI just in case.
Henrik Skupin - Bug 1839123 - [wdspec] Add back accidentally removed capability selection. r=webdriver-reviewers,Sasha

Comment 3

[Dianna Smith [:diannaS] - on Leave, back on August 9th]

:masayuki do you think you can take a look here, it seems very unlikely that bug 1839123 caused this but I can recreate the issue consistently on that changeset. Not sure what could have caused this from 2023-06-20.

looping in :denschub because i noticed it was also filed in https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/125920

Comment 4

[Avner Falk]

Curiouser and curiouser :-) I have the same issue. Did it start with a particular version of Firefox? Can a downgrade solve it?

Comment 5

[Sören Hentzschel]

I was not able to reproduce the issue until I reloaded WhatsApp with disabled cache. Since then I can reproduce the issue on the exactly same build, no Firefox update involved. And I am on Nightly, not Firefox 116. A few days ago it still worked. So it seems very likely that WhatsApp rolled out a change.

Firefox Nightly 118.0a1 (2023-08-17) on macOS 13.5.

After installing https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/absolute-enable-right-click/ and enabling the copy option in the add-on's control panel, it works again. So whatever the add-on does, it may provide insight into where the problem lies.

Comment 6

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

(In reply to Dianna Smith [:diannaS] from comment #1)

which is odd because it points to test changes but NI just in case.
Henrik Skupin - Bug 1839123 - [wdspec] Add back accidentally removed capability selection. r=webdriver-reviewers,Sasha

Yeah, code changes for WebDriver would not be related here. Firefox would have to be started with --marionette or --remote-debugging-port to actually enable the feature. So it has to be something else.

Comment 7

[Dennis Schubert [:denschub]]

I can't test this as I don't have a WhatsApp account. I'll redirect this to Ksenia, hopefully she has the time to look into this!

Comment 8

[Dennis Schubert [:denschub]]

Given this comment by Calin, this is also happening on Release, so this might be an intermittent issue. It might also be a recent deployment on their end (that's not fully propagated yet) - I'll send them an email and ask.

Comment 9

[PureOcean]

(In reply to Avner Falk from comment #4)

Did it start with a particular version of Firefox?

After updated to Firefox 117.0b8 from 117.0b7.

OS: Windows 11 (10.0.22621.2134)

Comment 10

[okardec]

(In reply to Avner Falk from comment #4)

Curiouser and curiouser :-) I have the same issue. Did it start with a particular version of Firefox? Can a downgrade solve it?

After updated 116.0.3 in August 16, 2023

Comment 11

[Ksenia Berezina [:ksenia]]

(In reply to Dennis Schubert [:denschub] from comment #8)

Given this comment by Calin, this is also happening on Release, so this might be an intermittent issue. It might also be a recent deployment on their end (that's not fully propagated yet) - I'll send them an email and ask.

FWIW I tried running mozregression on Windows and can reproduce it as far as 2023-01-02 for my account, haven't tried earlier builds. It is also broken on MacOS for me and reproduces at least from 2022-09-01. So yeah, it looks like a change on WhatsApp side and not a regression.

I'll try to do diagnosis to see if I can figure out what's causing it, but it might take some time

Comment 12

[Ksenia Berezina [:ksenia]]

I believe we received a response from WhatsApp and they are looking into this issue.

Comment 13

[Dennis Schubert [:denschub]]

WhatsApp found the bug and described it here. A fix is developed "and should be deployed on Monday". I'll close this bug as fixed because of that.

But it sounds like we need to do some follow-up diagnosis to figure out if there is something that Firefox can change to make this behavior less surprising.