Clipboard behaviour varies across browsers — this guide covers what to expect in each supported browser and how to use the in-lab Clipboard tools as an alternative.
Summary
For the best Clipboard experience in our labs, we recommend using a Chromium browser.
Once you've granted permission, Chrome and Edge let you copy, cut, and paste text content between your machine and the remote desktop. Clipboard functionality is limited in Firefox and Safari. To work around those browser restrictions, we've built alternative in-lab Clipboard tools.
Chromium Browsers
Chrome and Edge currently offer the best experience among our supported browsers because they allow access to read and write content in the client clipboard once permission has been granted.
This means you should be able to copy, cut, and paste text content between your machine and the remote desktop.
If that's not working for you, it's possible the Clipboard permission has been blocked.
Granting Permission
If you're using Chrome, you'll need to agree to the pop-up prompt for copying and pasting to work properly.
If you've blocked the Clipboard, you'll need to enable access.
- Open Chrome and click the three dots menu in the top right corner.
- Go to Settings, then click Privacy and security on the left.
- Click Site settings, scroll down to Additional permissions, and open Clipboard.
- Choose "Sites can ask to see text and images on your clipboard".
- Ensure that Immersive isn’t listed under ‘Not allowed to see your clipboard’.
If you have blocked the Clipboard, you'll need to enable access. You can do so by selecting the padlock icon next to the address bar and choosing to allow the Clipboard:
If you have granted permission and you are still experiencing problems please see our Clipboard Exceptions section below.
Non-Chromium Browsers
Non-Chromium browsers such as Firefox and Safari set limits on Clipboard access, so you might run into issues. The following table illustrates these limitations.
Firefox
Firefox blocks all read-access to your Clipboard, but it does provide full write-access. This means that you'll be able to copy and paste from the remote desktop to your own Clipboard, but won't be able to copy and paste from your own environment to the remote desktop.
Safari
Safari is the strictest of all browsers when it comes to Clipboard support. This means that relying on native clipboard functionality in our labs when using Safari is not possible.
We are not able to resolve these browser issues directly, so we made some in-lab Clipboard tools available to help with this.
In-Lab Clipboard Tools
Clipboard Feature
Labs that have a virtual machine also have an in-lab Clipboard feature. This allows you to temporarily store data copied from a lab or a browser window and paste it back into the lab.
Our in-lab Clipboard feature serves as a fallback solution when trying to use your own native Clipboard fails. When you copy or cut text within the remote desktop, this text is then displayed within the text area of the Clipboard feature, from here you can then copy this text from this text area onto your Client (device) clipboard. Additionally you can also modify the contents of this text area, or paste text into this text area to modify the remote desktop clipboard.
This tool is not affected by restrictions on Clipboard access imposed by the browser; its functionality will work across all our supported browsers.
Here's what our in-lab Clipboard feature looks like:
Note: You can use Ctrl + Alt + Shift or Ctrl + Command + Shift (Mac) as a keyboard shortcut to show this Clipboard tab.
Copy to Clipboard Buttons
Our copy to Clipboard buttons, which are found in lab tasks, credentials and briefing tabs provide a convenient way to set values to both the client and remote desktop Clipboard's with one click. Here's an example:
Clipboard Exceptions
We have purposefully disabled the clipboard on malware labs
In a handful of labs we have disabled the Clipboard at the operating system level on the remote desktop.
This is to prevent you from potentially copying harmful content – like malware from a lab – to your own personal device.
We have disabled copy / paste in some remote desktops
For security reasons, in some of our labs we have disabled the ability to copy/cut text from the Remote desktop and in other cases also to restrict pasting into the Remote desktop.
If you're still having issues
- Have you tried restarting the lab?
- Contact our Customer Support team and provide details such as: whether this is occurring for you in a single lab (if so, which) or across all labs and which browsers were used