One of Apple’s ‘magic moment’ features kept failing, then I found the fix

One of the best things about Apple products is how well they tend to work together. Various ‘continuity’ features create magic moments and a seamless experience. Recently I was having reliability issues with one such feature, though: Universal Clipboard. Here’s what went wrong, and the simple fix.

Universal Clipboard troubles were solved by one habit change

Universal Clipboard is the kind of feature that, as a long-time Apple user, it’s hard to imagine not having anymore.

Here’s what it does, per Apple:

You can use a feature called Universal Clipboard to copy content from one of your Apple devices and paste it on another. For example, you can copy text on your iPad and paste it into a note on your iPhone, or copy an image from a Safari webpage on your iPhone and paste it into an email message on your Mac.

The continuity feature debuted in iOS 10 all the way back in 2016. I’d say in the early days its reliability wasn’t the best, but it improved over time.

Recently though, I started experiencing a lot of new issues getting Universal Clipboard to work.

But after a little troubleshooting, I discovered a pattern.

Without realizing it, I was doing something that stopped the feature from working.

I don’t know if this is a new habit of mine, or Apple tweaked the way Universal Clipboard works recently.

In any case, here was the issue: I would copy text on my iPhone, then lock the device and hit CMD+V on my iPad to paste.

The trouble is, this would never work.

What I learned is that locking my iPhone was the problem.

Every time I copied something on my iPhone and left the device unlocked, I could paste to my iPad with no trouble.

But every time I locked my iPhone first, my iPad wouldn’t use the Universal Clipboard clipping.

I’ve found this an odd limitation, since I would assume copying something on one device, then locking it before moving to another is fairly common.

Even more curious: the same issue doesn’t happen when done in reverse. Copying on my iPad, then locking it, still allows me to paste on my iPhone with Universal Clipboard.

The inconsistency doesn’t make sense to me, which makes me think a recent bug might indeed be the issue. Apple’s support documentation doesn’t mention that both devices need to be unlocked for it to work.

In any case, I’m glad to know the workaround. If I leave both devices unlocked, Universal Clipboard works seamlessly for me every time.

Do you have this same issue when using Universal Clipboard? Let us know in the comments.

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