matt621 said

I'm having this same problem for about a week. What no one answered is WHY this suddenly happened. And why only on firefox?

GrayFace said

Here's a selective fix for YouTube: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/12433-fix-paste-on-youtube You need to install Scriptish or Greasemonkey first.

This works.

Thank you for the answer but the question still remains: a month ago I had no problem. 4 years ago when I started using Firefox I had no problem.

Now suddenly without any explanation, this quirky problem shows up. I really would like to know why? Why only on selective sites? Why Firefox but not Chrome? To me the answer as to "why" is just as (or more) important than how to fix it.

Would would a 3rd party script be needed?

What is the 3rd party script doing to fix it?

What are these websites doing that causes the problem in the first place?

Thanks

Hi matt621, why does YouTube intercept the paste command, and why does the code it runs upon interception prevent the paste from happening in Firefox 40-41?

I can't answer these questions. Google's scripts tend to be very complex and I couldn't follow what they do. I also don't know how much Google cares about its sites working in Firefox.

The Greasemonkey user script works by blocking Google's scripts from detecting that there was a paste so that it cannot be intercepted.

Thank you. That helps me understand the issue much better. I ran into this on a .gov website as well. And of course Facebook. So it looks like they may be trying to stop spamming, okay, but then why do they exclude Chrome? They think spammers don't use Chrome? ;-) <sarcasm>

Which makes me wonder more. But I do say thank you for the reply. That answers my question!

my easy guess is they want to stop link pasting. Youtube comments were recently disconnected from Google+, which DID allow link pasting.

Perhaps they only want chrome users to be able to do this, to further its race against FF.

Either way, Google is constantly changing things, making it a moving target and hard to keep up with.

matt621 said

Thank you for the answer but the question still remains: a month ago I had no problem. 4 years ago when I started using Firefox I had no problem. Now suddenly without any explanation, this quirky problem shows up. I really would like to know why? Why only on selective sites? Why Firefox but not Chrome? To me the answer as to "why" is just as (or more) important than how to fix it. Would would a 3rd party script be needed? What is the 3rd party script doing to fix it? What are these websites doing that causes the problem in the first place? Thanks

1N07 said

"I have a fix. go to your address bar and type "about:config" no quotes, and then hit the "i'll be careful, I promise" button, next type "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled" then double click it, so the value is false. And that should do the trick." - pcdude234 (tomshardware) Worked :P

Yes this worked great for me also. I just suddenly couldn't paste to youtube one day a couple months ago, probably some ffox update did it.

This is one thing I sure like with ffox over chrome. I had to switch due to chrome maxing my cpu in a minute or two (on more than one pc) and could get no help from anyone. The forums/community there is just a place for us to all bitch. You get near zero help from google, yet I have found solutions or got personal help here every time I have had problems. Firefox works great for me. Thanks.

Hi helpful55, if you discover sites where paste suddenly does nothing or causes strange effects, you may need to switch this setting back to the default and try the userscript approach instead. (This has been observed on Facebook, pasting into comments.) For that see: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1080597#answer-783815

GrayFace said

Here's a selective fix for YouTube: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/12433-fix-paste-on-youtube You need to install Scriptish or Greasemonkey first.

Thanks for the solution, I will give it a try.

I looked at the userscript. I am not familiar with Grease Monkey.

Do these 2 commented lines in the script limit the script to only effect YouTube?

   // @include        https://www.youtube.com/*  
   // @include        http://www.youtube.com/*

Hi ff2fan, yes, the @include and/or @match lines show which sites the script is applied to.

This page documents the various lines you may see in that initial comment block: http://wiki.greasespot.net/Metadata_Block

If you don't want to install Greasemonkey, you can make a simple toggle for this (and any other) about:config value with the PrefBar extension. Paste the following into a text file, give it a .btn extension and import into PrefBar (right click on the customise window and select import).

{

 "prefbar:info": {
   "formatversion": 3
 },
 "prefbar:menu:enabled": {
   "items": [
     "prefbar:button:clipevents"
   ]
 },
 "prefbar:button:clipevents": {
   "label": "Clipboard Events",
   "type": "check",
   "prefstring": "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled",
   "topref": "value ? true : false",
   "frompref": "value == true"
 }

}

Personally I don't like to add scripts to browsers. The problem exist to internet explorer of Windows 10 too, but not to Microsoft edge and Opera. I hope next Firefox version will has solution.

UPDATE I installed Firefox 42. It is happening again ! No paste in youtube comments !

Safereader said

UPDATE I installed Firefox 42. It is happening again ! No paste in youtube comments !

Great to hear they've fixed it.

Hi SafeReader, I don't know whether anyone has dug into Google's scripts deeply enough to identify what would need to be changed in Firefox. Even if someone does that, depending on the complexity of the changes, it may take a couple versions to get it released. I suggest using a workaround for now.

How To Enable Copy and Paste Comments On Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwy5SL1KZhA watch this video to get complete information

HowToWord It fix the problem for paste in youtube from Firefox but create problem to paste on Facebook. Try to paste a youtube video link on your Facebook profile and you will see what will happen. xtcrefugee I wonder why the programmers of Mozzila did not use a script like this from the first time? ! Τhey didn't see the problem? They knew already the problem from previous version 41. Why they didn't fix it? ! I wonder... I wonder if the reason is the engine of Firefox, The browsers that have no paste problem on youtube are Google Chrome (no kidding ;-) ), the Opera, and Vivaldi. All have the engine BLINK. Coincidence?... Opera is slow, Vivaldi has a small problem in Facebook, and Chrome eats a lot of memory ! I saw on youtube a temporary method to paste something, Is not solution but if you have a big text that you made edit on MS Word or other program it can save you long time to rewrite it if you want to use Firefox. link text

I want to report that I've had the same problem of not being able to paste anything into YouTube comments.

At first, the fix of setting "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled" to false worked, but since then, the problem seems to happen on and off randomly.

I am also having similar problems in Facebook. (I have reported this on another thread.) When I paste text into Facebook comments, the comments box becomes really glitchy and the text cannot be edited.

MartyJames

Until this moment in Firefox you can use only the temporary method mentioned in this video https://youtu.be/gskZZLjGM6I The fix of setting "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled" fix ONLY the youtube problem but create problems to Facebook. So reset it to default to work ok your Facebook.

Hi MartyJames, another workaround is to use an add-on. Specifically, a user script that blocks YouTube's paste interception script. This involves a combination of two installs:

(1) The Greasemonkey extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/

(2) This userscript: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/12433-fix-paste-on-youtube