1867356 - [KDE] Copy broken

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Widget: Gtk, defect, P2)

Description

[Lolren]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/119.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

The copy is broken in firefox on Linux (KDE user) for most users! Please check reddit posts! its happening for the last 2 years or so! Most of the time the right click -Copy is greyed out, but even when its not, it still not working most of time

Actual results:

Selecting something has the "copy" option greyed out most of the time! When it`s not greyed out, most of the time copy fails

Expected results:

copy the text to the clipboard!

Comment 1

[Lolren]

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/uko1bp/reddit_copypaste_not_working_in_firefox/ this is the reddit post of users reporting the issue!

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Gtk' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 3

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

This is for reddit site only, right? If so can you provide me a reproduction steps? I don't use the site myself.

Comment 4

[Pedro [:pedrov]]

I'm not convinced the issue linked on Reddit is the same as what's being described.

I do remember seeing some greyed out basic functionality once, although I'm not sure it was copy, but otherwise as a KDE user I can't confirm at least the greyed out issue.

Other than that, Bug 1791417 is unfortunately still around due to the assumption that primary selection is always available which is simply incorrect since Wayland, so I can see that being a troublemaker in weird way, although it "only" manifests itself as an address copying bug for me in both Firefox and Thunderbird. The copying failing description does fit that at least.

Checked to see if it could be something site specific.
The "good" old Reddit interface is okay without issues.
The new interface doesn't seem to prevent copying, but it does seem to mess with text selection which I can see being a problem for copying, and I can envision A/B testing involving more hostile procedures, but then the linked issue is old enough for that not to be too likely.

Comment 5

[Lolren]

I understand that the issue doesnt manifest for any of you, but does anyone uses KDE? I use KDE on my work and home laptop and the bug is still present in both laptops. Actually, i could say there are 2 bugs around related to copy. The first one, which is present in KDE for about 1 year or so, which I thought its a KDE but, not a Firefox bug is that copy doesn`t work most of the time.
The second one is that on some websites, and randomly, especially when you copy highlighted code from websites ( Stackoverflow, Arduino forums etc) is that COPY is greyed out!
How to reproduce?

Install a KDE distro, lets say KDE Neon or Kubuntu and daily use Firefox for a few days! its getting frustrating when you have to do work.

I`ve switched to a chrome based browsed and problem went away!

Ive tried the snap version and the tar.gz version of firefox. Addons: Ublock origin, Adblock Plus, Video download helper, Plasma integration addon, Export Cookies, I dont care about cookies, Webserial for Frefox!

Comment 6

[Pedro [:pedrov]]

I thought the "as a KDE user" mention was clear enough. This also results in the follow-up "problem" that I can confidently say that your reproducer isn't specific enough as I started using KDE + Firefox daily multiple years ago on multiple hosts almost daily, therefore I can state that it's not enough to do just as much as you described.
I generally don't believe Firefox is at fault here, but I'm still maintaining that the bogus primary selection usage could lead to such weird problems.

There's a need for more specific info. If you ran into this on multiple hosts, then chances are good that you have even some hardware diversity, but then I'd guess that the software is the same, unless you meant to state that you use KDE Neon on one, and Kubuntu on the other.
There's so much more to describe:

• What do you mean by it being broken for most users? If you know so many people who are affected, then info on their setups are welcome too
• KDE "About this System" gives a quite basic system description
• Have you tried disabling at least most of the addons temporarily? For example two adblockers sound just as good as double bagging condoms
• Does Ctrl-C work anyway? I'd expect a greyed out Copy option not to be even noticed by a lot of users as copying text is typically not done by using the context menu
• Did you notice any pattern regarding when does copying stop working? Have you tried stress testing by just opening Firefox and a text editor after system boot and doing a whole lot of copying to see if it breaks that way? A pattern might emerge at one point showing that a specific program running in the background or pasting to a specific program may be the problem.
• When copying isn't working, is it broken everywhere on just on a specific page while other pages are working?

Also, to avoid the weird formatting in your posts you should stop using backticks instead of apostrophes.

Comment 7

[Lolren]

Sorry for the formatting . I'm used to write using "'".
Yes, I use 2 laptops, one with KDE Neon and 1 with Kubuntu.
Regarding many users, I've seen the Reddit post that people are complaining about the same problem.
Both X11 and Wayland have the issue.
CTRL+C always work
I've just started to use 2 ad-blockers now, problem persist with only Ublock Origin .
Will try in the following days to disable all addons ans enable one by one.

Comment 8

[Lolren]

Just realised I've pasted the wrong Reddit link!
The correct link is:
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/16p8ttr/copypaste_from_rightclick_menu_is/?share_id=XHvdfk2KSZw03NTVlIl2K&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

Comment 9

[bbird]

I don't think this bug is specific to Linux KDE. Also started recently experiencing this on 120.0.1 (64-bit) on Win11.

Comment 10

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

If you see it can you create a screencast of the issue?
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_debug_Firefox_problems#Collect_information_for_a_bug_report
Thanks.

Comment 11

[Lolren]

Attachment: Copy doesn`t work 1 time out of 10 tries. Ctrl+c also doesn't work

This bug happens on Windows as well. Just found out that if I reset my profile ( delete settings ) the bug doesn't appear until i login and sync Firefox. Sadly, I think About:config settings gets transferred as well, and there is no easy way of defaulting everything.

Comment 12

[Lolren]

Attachment: here is same website after second try. it works as it should