Copy and Paste of Widgets Not Working Until DevTools Is Opened (Possible Clipboard Event Bug)

Hi Tulip team,

I’ve run into a consistent issue in the Tulip App Editor where copying and pasting widgets doesn’t work, even though cutting and duplicating do. It appears to be related to how the clipboard event handlers are initialized in the browser.

Environment

  • Tulip App Editor (latest cloud version, as of October 2025)

  • Browsers tested:

    • Microsoft Edge (latest)

    • Google Chrome (latest)

  • Clipboard permissions: Enabled manually for the Tulip site

  • Same behavior across multiple apps and steps

  • OS: Windows 11

Observed behavior

  • Ctrl+X (Cut) → Works

  • Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V (Copy & Paste) → Does not work for widgets

  • Copy/paste of text inside text boxes → Works

  • Right-click Copy/Paste → Fails as well

Workaround discovered

Opening the browser’s Inspect / DevTools window (Ctrl+Shift+I) immediately re-enables copy and paste functionality.
After doing so, widget copy/paste works — though with a slight delay — and continues working even after the DevTools window is closed.

This suggests that Tulip’s clipboard or keyboard event listeners are not properly initialized until the DevTools context is opened (possibly an issue with navigator.clipboard.read() permissions or React event binding).

Thank you for this detailed issue description. Appreciate all the extra logs and troubleshooting steps!

We’ll investigate and circle back.

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