Following the latest iOS update, I’m trying to use the app on iPad and whenever I tap the screen a notification pops up saying it’s pasted from Safari.
I’m not actually pasting anything, so this is really annoying.
Anyone else getting this?
I don’t think that is something being caused by Scrivener, at least I’ve never seen anything like that and it sounds like you aren’t doing much at all to see it.
It could be you have something installed that messes with the clipboard, some kind of utility? I don’t know much about it, maybe somebody else has seen something similar and has better advice.
The moment an app looks at the clipboard, whether or not it actually copies and pastes any text, iOS pops up this message. If Scrivener “pre-loads” anything from the clipboard to, say, make paste (if it happens) go faster, this message will appear. I just tested it with iOS Scrivener 1.2.2 and the message appears when the pop-up “copy/paste/etc.” menu appears.
Ulysses used to display this message (since it preloaded the clipboard to make pastes go faster) as did Firefox and one or two other iOS editors I’ve used, but users get so freaked by this message that Scrivener is the only app I know of that still does this.
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Okay, yes I see it when I actually pull up the menu on text editing, but not upon every action as originally reported. I’m guessing that has to do with the fact that Scrivener can paste images as well as text into the editor. I would need to check to determine which options to provide in the menu. There probably isn’t a good way around that, and I don’t think it’s too out of line to read the clipboard when presenting a menu that concerns itself with pasting, among other things.
I get it. I thought the message was over the top the first time I saw it–the whole point of the clipboard is to transfer data between apps. But it’s touted as a security measure; evidently apps are not supposed to look at the clipboard unless and until they actually are requested to do so by the user. This has actually been a thing since iOS 14; here’s a link to an old article about it: https://www.howtogeek.com/692572/why-are-iphone-apps-pasting-from-other-apps/ I noticed this in iOS Scrivener quite some time ago, but as I don’t really give a darn if Scriv looks at the clipboard, and no longer use iOS Scrivener that much anyway, I didn’t report it…
Oh, as an aside to the rest—it’s an annoying message to me on several levels. Essentially this kind of stuff forces developers out of creativity and into little boxes of acceptable behaviour. There are many good reasons to process a clipboard automatically, but now they can’t, because alarming and annoying messages get spammed in the user’s face by the OS whenever such things are done.
Essentially it moves the problem to the wrong place—offline processing. The bad actor is the software or operating system sending data off the device without permission. That’s where the point of failure is, not accessing universal data in the system and doing useful things with it.
But anyway, all rather beside the point. 
It’s 100% being caused by Scrivener. It doesn’t happen with any other apps, and it’s only just started to happen now in Scrivener after the update.
To clarify, it’s every time I select any word or line of text by tapping in a document where I have the editor opened.
Okay, thanks for the confirmation. As noted above this probably has to do with figuring out what is on the clipboard so that the contextual menu is presented correctly. It should only be appearing when the contextual menu does, at least that is what I’m seeing. Normal cursor movement or other kinds of navigation do not seem to be checking the clipboard.
I’ve got it on the list to look at, to see if there is a way of intelligently handling the clipboard without handling the clipboard. Maybe Apple has some way of doing this now.
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well, it does happen with other apps. I’ve seen it.
Thanks to @Silverdragon for digging up why
I imagine if you go ahead and paste whatever it is you’ve got on your keyboard, the message will go away.
Because we don’t see this at all normally…
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I didn’t realize you could see my apps @narrsd – but I can assure you, it’s not happening on any of them (apart from Scrivener)
Oh, you’d be surprised, seems likely, but the point stated was that others are seeing this problem, and their apps are not Scrivener.
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Just to add some tech flavor here: My past couple of programming jobs have involved detecting and preventing fraud. One the ways we do that is by trying to “fingerprint” your device. This is why Apple’s newer OSs make it difficult to enumerate system fonts, for example.
The ability to peek at the clipboard unnoticed was a big privacy issue because the clipboard could contain all kinds of things (personal information, URLs, login credentials, etc.), and it allowed apps to identify your device uniquely (sometimes). So Apple added this thing that lets you know when an app is looking. It doesn’t prevent it (for now). It just gives you a heads up.
It’s not specific to Scrivener. It’s any app using the older iOS APIs for accessing the clipboard. Since iOS 14, you’re expected to use the UIPasteboard API, which doesn’t give you direct access but lets you at least answer questions about the clipboard without directly accessing it. In other words, Apple is trying to give engineers a way to use as little information about the clipboard as possible.
I’m deeply sympathetic to AmberV’s complaint: developing on iOS can feel like standing on shaky ground that could give way because so many behaviors change from year to year. Apple doesn’t do it for frivolous reasons, but it still makes life tough for an app developer.
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Do you have examples of these supposed other apps that also do this? Since spotting it on Scrivener the other day I’ve been trying to find another app that also does it, but alas, no luck.
I’m sorry that I don’t have examples offhand, but I promise they exist. They’re more rare these days than in 2020. You can see this behavior in the article linked earlier in the topic.
It’s important to distinguish between something being within Scrivener’s control and something being Scrivener’s fault.
@emilyst , that’s a very good and solidly knowledgeable answer.
I was just going to refer @Silverdragon 's article, which is from a generally quite reputable source, and can be found, once again , Here.
As this is probably an improvement he would have liked to have made, and might be able to include in a fixup along with any other small things that have shown up in this quite appreciated relase, I’m going to introduce it to @KB Keith with this mention .
Your thought on comments of responsibility is just the right one, and I’ll quote it here:
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This issue is now worse than ever since the iPad OS 16 update. There is a menu that pops up in the middle of the screen asking permission to paste, locking you out of actually working until you tap an option. At least previously it was just a popup at the top of the screen.
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Does this thread answer how to change that? Also make sure you’ve updated, as it looks like 16 shipped with a bug where this wasn’t working correctly, and there was no interface for stopping the prompt.
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Glorious, thank you!