(Web, Safari) Copying and pasting line with colon and no leading space results in URL encoding of pasted text

[keithporcaro]

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes

• VS Code Version: Web
• OS Version: iPadOS 18.1 (Safari)

VSCode Web on iPadOS/Safari appears to be erroneously encoding certain copied text as a URL.

So copying this string of text from a VSCode Web file:
foo: bar

And pasting it into another VSCode web file will result in:
foo:%20bar

This is only the case if there isn’t a space before the colon anywhere on the line. So,
foo: bar and foo bar: baz both copy and paste normally.

This also only happens within VSCode web. So, copying foo: bar from an external app and pasting it into VSCode Web or copying foo: bar from VSCode web into another app both work fine.

I have not been able to reproduce this on VSCode Web on Mac or Windows.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. On iPadOS on Safari, open a new file on VSCode Web (or Github Codespaces)
2. Write text foo: bar
3. Copy to clipboard, where the first character of selection is NOT whitespace
4. Paste into same file.

ScreenRecording_12-09-2024.12-30-07_1.mov

[joyceerhl]

I am unable to reproduce this behavior in Safari on macOS with vscode.dev, do you happen to have an extension installed that might be interfering here?

[keithporcaro]

I noted this in the original issue: it’s only on iPadOS (and iOS) safari. I’m not seeing the issue on Mac either. I see it without any extensions installed—also reproduced on VSCode.dev in a clean private browsing session.

[mjbvz]

Seems to happen on copy as you can also paste the wrong content into other apps

[mjbvz]

For anyone investigating, it seems fixed if you set "editor.pasteAs.enabled": false

That means a good place to start is likely the copy paste controller:

vscode/src/vs/editor/contrib/dropOrPasteInto/browser/copyPasteController.ts

Line 165 in 31f77d2

private handleCopy(e: ClipboardEvent) {

[uvguy]

this issue relate to this coder/code-server#7116