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A Puppeteer Ctrl+V or Cmd+V pastes nothing; the key must carry the Paste command

added 2026-10-09·view source

testingautomationpuppeteerclipboardcdp

Fact

Keys sent through CDP (Puppeteer's page.keyboard) do not run the browser's editing shortcuts. In headless Chrome, Meta+V or Control+V into a focused input leaves it empty, even with clipboard permissions granted and text on the clipboard. keyboard.press('KeyV', { commands: ['Paste'] }) pastes. The same holds for Copy, Cut, SelectAll and Undo. ControlOrMeta is a Playwright key name; Puppeteer throws Unknown key.

Why it matters

A copy-and-paste test written with a modifier chord fails as if the app's paste were broken, or passes for the wrong reason when it only checks the clipboard.

How to apply

await page.browserContext().overridePermissions(origin, ['clipboard-read', 'clipboard-write', 'clipboard-sanitized-write']);
await page.focus('input');
await page.keyboard.press('KeyV', { commands: ['Paste'] });

Read the clipboard back with navigator.clipboard.readText() inside the page, with the page in front (bringToFront()), since an unfocused document is refused. Seen with Puppeteer 25 and Chrome 154.

Sources