To duplicate + C and to paste (⌘ + V) has always been a basic function of a Mac. We use them hundreds of times a day and they have become an integral part of our working lives. When they don’t work, they can cause a lot of trouble at work.
Everything we copy on our Mac is stored in a buffer space called the clipboard, and can contain any type of information, from text snippets to files to images.
Technically, the Clipboard is a piece of software that is part of the MacOS just like any other piece of software. This is why it is susceptible to errors and glitches. Unlike other software, however, the Clipboard doesn’t have a user interface, so you can’t interact with it, exit it, or restart it in a normal way.
How to Fix Copy and Paste on a Mac The way to fix an unusable clipboard in MacOS is essentially to find that particular process and restart it. You can do this in two ways: using a terminal or an activity monitor.
The terminal is the fastest and most accurate way to deal with the fact that copy-paste doesn’t work:
Open a terminal
Type: killall pboard, press Enter
The pboard process is the one that runs the clipboard on the Mac, and this command forces it to shut down. But since you can’t run the Mac without the clipboard, the pboard restarts automatically and is expected to function normally.
There is another way to restart the pboard using the Activity Monitor:
Start the Activity Monitor
Use search to find the pboard procedure at the top
Select pboard and click the stop icon in the top bar
opt-out
There you go, fixing the copy and paste that didn’t work with the simple steps above.