[BUG] Auto-paste fails on GNOME 50.1 Wayland — ext-data-control protocol not supported

[aagha]

Bug Description

Auto-paste fails on GNOME 50.1 (Wayland) — transcription works and text reaches the clipboard, but Handy cannot paste into the active application.

On Wayland with GNOME 50.1, Handy transcribes correctly and the transcribed text appears in clipboard history (confirmed via a clipboard manager), but the auto-paste step fails with "Failed to Paste Text / Text could not be pasted into the active application."

The root cause appears to be that GNOME 50.1 does not support the ext-data-control or wlr-data-control Wayland protocols that wtype requires. At startup, Handy logs:

[arboard::platform::linux][WARN] Tried to initialize the wayland data control protocol clipboard, but failed. Falling back to the X11 clipboard protocol.

What works:

• Global hotkey (Ctrl+Space) triggers recording ✅
• Transcription completes successfully ✅
• Transcribed text is written to the clipboard ✅

What fails:

• Auto-paste into the active application ❌

All paste methods fail (Direct, Clipboard (Ctrl+V)). The overlay (set to Minimal/Bottom) is required for the global hotkey to register — setting Overlay to None causes the hotkey to stop working entirely.

wtype is installed (/usr/bin/wtype), WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0 is set, but paste still fails.

System Information

App Version: v0.9.3

Operating System: Ubuntu 26.04, GNOME Shell 50.1, Wayland session (XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland)

CPU: ThinkPad X1 Carbon — Intel (x86_64, haswell backend detected by Handy)

GPU: Intel integrated (no discrete GPU — CPU backend only)

Logs

[arboard::platform::linux][WARN] Tried to initialize the wayland data control protocol clipboard, but failed. Falling back to the X11 clipboard protocol. The error was: Unknown error while interacting with the clipboard: A required Wayland protocol (ext-data-control, or wlr-data-control version 1) is not supported by the compositor
[handy_app_lib::commands][INFO] Enigo initialized successfully after permission grant
[handy_app_lib::commands][INFO] Shortcuts initialized successfully
[handy_app_lib::tray][ERROR] Failed to update tray icon 'resources/transcribing.png': Software caused connection abort (os error 103)

[aagha]

Additional context — workaround required to get transcription working at all:

To get any transcription output on this setup, these specific settings are required:

• Overlay must be set to Minimal (not None) — with Overlay=None, the global hotkey (Ctrl+Space) does not register at all on Wayland
• Paste Method: Clipboard (Ctrl+V)
• Clipboard Handling: Copy to Clipboard

With these settings, the hotkey works and transcription completes, but auto-paste still fails. The transcribed text does reach the clipboard (confirmed via clipboard manager history) and can be manually pasted with Ctrl+V.

The dependency of hotkey registration on the overlay being visible appears to be a separate issue — on Wayland, the overlay should not be required for global shortcut registration to work.

[cjpais]

You definitely should read https://handy.computer/docs and the README, both probably have hints on how to help more broadly speaking

Basically Linux DE is a disaster and very hard to support consistently at the moment. I will try and support but it takes time, and please if you can search if this is a duplicate. It seems likely this issue is already open

[juanjoarana]

I fixed my handy setup in Ubuntu like this: https://gist.github.com/juanjoarana/3a27c488fd98eabc2943c09cd29663a0