Each upgrade to iOS and iPadOS brings new security features. In the end, it’s better for security but there may be some difficulty along the way. One of the things that iOS 16 introduced is a popup alert asking you if it’s okay for an app to read your clipboard (the place things go when you choose “copy”). This is important because before iOS 16 any app could read the contents of your clipboard and do who-knows-what with it. This could contain passwords, personal information, just about anything.
On the other hand, there are legitimate reasons for apps to read your clipboard. Take Deliveries, my favorite package tracking app. It reads your clipboard to see if you have a tracking number or tracking link copied. If you do, it will track it for you.
Unfortunately, with iOS 16 this results in asking to read your clipboard every time you launch the app. But you can change this behavior for Deliveries or for any other app. Go to your Settings app. Scroll to the bottom where all of your apps are listed alphabetically. Tap the app in question. Tap “Paste from Other Apps”. From there you can switch it to Always if you trust the app so that it can read your clipboard any time it wants, or choose Deny so that it no longer asks and you have to paste items manually.
If you have any trouble pasting in a particular app, you may need to switch it back to “ask” and suffer. Some older apps haven’t been updated to properly ask for the clipboard and won’t allow pasting at all if set to “Deny”.
Further Help
If you are an existing customer who needs help with this or if you have other questions, or if you are in San Francisco and interested in becoming a client I invite you to book an appointment with me. Otherwise, you may wish to contact Apple Support or find a local Apple consultant.
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