Paste option not working in Safari

Sometimes the background process that handles "Rich Text" (formatted) pasting gets stuck, while the "Plain Text" (Match Style) process keeps working. You can force-restart this without restarting your computer.

1. Open Terminal (Cmd + Space, type "Terminal").
2. Type this exact command and hit Enter: killall pboard
3. Close Terminal.
4. Try to paste in Safari again.

Test in Safe Mode – Restart your Mac and hold the power button until you see “Options”, then select your user and hold Shift to boot Safe Mode. Does the issue persist?

Test in a different user account – If you don’t already have one, create a new user in System Settings → Users & Groups, log into it and test copy-paste there.

If it works fine for the new user, likely it’s something in your main user account (settings, prefs, extension).

Keyboard shortcut conflicts – Go to System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts and see whether ⌘ C / ⌘ V have been accidentally remapped or disabled.

Third-party utilities – Do you have any clipboard manager, hot-key remapper, accessibility tool, macro utility, etc.? These could interfere with standard shortcuts. Try quitting them (or disabling) and see if it resolves.

Check for stuck modifier key or keyboard error – Press ⌘ C, ⌘ V in a simple app (TextEdit) and see if the window closes, or if only a specific app behaves this way. If it’s app-specific maybe the app intercepts those keys.

Further

There is no really need to Force Quit Clipboard , as suggested

To open Terminal on your Mac, Finder >> Go >> Utilities > Terminal

This command will clear the Clipboard of whatever is currently on Clipboard

 pbcopy < /dev/null 

This will empty the clipboard.

While you are at it and predicated on your user byline " MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 14.5 "

Update the computer to the latest offering from Apple

macOS Sonoma 14.8.2 released 3 Nov 2025