MATLAB clipboard breaks Windows copy-paste

[wynnsyt]

Summary

While matlab-proxy is running, copying stuff in other apps such as Outlook and Excel becomes almost unusable. For example:

• Excel gives a "clipboard error" when I try to copy.

We couldn't copy the content to the clipboard because it's in use by another application. You can still paste your content within this workbook, but it won't be available in other applications.

• Pasting formula/formatting from Excel simply does not work.
• Pasting content between different apps becomes extremely sluggish and unreliable. Often I need to Ctrl-V multiple times before anything shows up.

Matlab-proxy shows the following in the web UI when I try to copy:

This data is on the MATLAB clipboard. To paste it elsewhere, first copy it to your system clipboard (with Ctrl+C or your system's equivalent).

This does not happen when the MATLAB the app is running. Question is how I can disable this clipboard hijacking. My MATLAB is 2022b and matlab-proxy is 0.24.2.

Browser(s) used

Microsoft Edge

Script output

No response

[Shushant2502]

Hi @wynnsyt ,

Thank you for reporting this issue and for trying out matlab-proxy. I was able to reproduce the issue on my Windows machine using MATLAB R2022b.

I have notified our development team, and we are continuing to investigate the issue. However, I have not yet identified any known workarounds for MATLAB R2022b.

I have verified that this issue does not occur in MATLAB R2024a or later versions. Would it be possible for you to upgrade to MATLAB R2024a or a newer version?

[wynnsyt]

Thanks for the feedback. R2022b is the latest version available in our organization.

Would there be a way to override the copy-paste behavior? This is so disruptive that this package is almost pointless.

[Shushant2502]

Thank you @wynnsyt for your response.

Upon further investigation it seems to me like this issue is due to issues with certain Java components.
Unfortunately, there isn't a documented API that I could find that disables this behavior.

However, from my limited testing, using the following command in MATLAB R2022b disables some part of the clipboard infrastructure which resolves the issues you were facing.

com.mathworks.matlabserver.jcp.GraphicsAndGuis.enableClipboardListener(false)

Please note that this command is undocumented and using it outside of what it might have been designed for may cause unforeseen issues. As with every undocumented function, please use with caution, as behavior could unexpectedly change over time. Additionally, it may or may not work in all versions of MATLAB.

Once you are satisfied that this generally resolves the issue and are happy with its stability, you might consider adding it to your startup scripts as it needs to run every time MATLAB is used from matlab-proxy.

You could also consider using the environment variable MWI_MATLAB_STARTUP_SCRIPT to achieve this.
See Run Custom MATLAB Startup Code for more information.

Please try this approach in your environment and let me know if it resolves the problem.

Regards,
Shushant

[wynnsyt]

Thanks for providing an option to change this behavior. After several days of testing, this seems to be working well to suppress the clipboard disruptions.

Thanks for the suggestion of running this in a startup script as well!