Bug 504589

Summary:	Spectacle (launched via shortcut) does cannot copy image to clipboard if the clipboard applet is disabled
Product:	[Applications] Spectacle	Reporter:	Daktyl <dakky198>
Component:	General	Assignee:	Noah Davis <noahadvs>
Status:	RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Severity:	normal	CC:	kde
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Arch Linux
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Daktyl 2025-05-21 01:04:20 UTC

***
If you're not sure this is actually a bug, instead post about it at https://discuss.kde.org

If you're reporting a crash, attach a backtrace with debug symbols; see https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Debugging/How_to_create_useful_crash_reports

Please remove this comment after reading and before submitting - thanks!
***

SUMMARY
As stated in title, spectacle (when launched via shortcuts) cannot copy images to the clipboard if the clipboard applet is disabled. Other applications (e.g. Firefox) have no issues copying images to the clipboard. Spectacle has no issues if the Clipboard applet is set to any setting other than "disabled".

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Go into system tray settings, entries, and disable the Clipboard applet
2. Use a global shortcut to screenshot a rectangular region
3. Try to copy and paste the resulting screenshot.

OBSERVED RESULT
The image is never copied to the clipboard, and so cannot be pasted

EXPECTED RESULT
The image is copied to the clipboard.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: CachyOS Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.14.0
Qt Version: 6.9.0
Kernel Version: 6.14.7-5-cachyos (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor
Memory: 31.3 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
When opening Spectacle as an application, with a window, copying images to the clipboard works as expected.

Comment 1 Noah Davis 2025-05-21 07:19:07 UTC

Unfortunately, this is expected behavior. Without a clipboard manager, apps cannot maintain their clipboard when they are not running. This is why the Spectacle window and Firefox appear to behave correctly while the global shortcut that acts like a temporary background process does not. It's a fundamental problem with not having a clipboard manager and we recently added a message to the system tray settings to warn you against disabling the clipboard manager:

> Disabling the clipboard is not recommended, as it will cause copied data to be lost when the application it was copied from is closed.
> 
> Instead consider configuring the clipboard to disable its history, or only remember one item at a time.