[vim/vim] Removing Wayland clipboard focus stealing code (Issue #18795)

Foxe Chen

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Nov 21, 2025, 7:29:32 PM11/21/25

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64-bitman created an issue (vim/vim#18795)

Unless there are people using this feature and verify that it works, I think we should remove it since its just a burden. With OSC 52 support in the works, accessing the clipboard in GNOME environments should be fine (VTE terminals dont support it, but Ghostty does and its fully GTK so...). The tests on my machine for the focus stealing code don't seem to pass + we can't really test it in a CI environment since it requires certain capabilities on seats. Overall this is pretty much a broken feature in my eyes. Thoughts?

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Foxe Chen

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Nov 23, 2025, 2:19:51 PM11/23/25

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64-bitman left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

@chrisbra thoughts?

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Christian Brabandt

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Nov 23, 2025, 2:57:15 PM11/23/25

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chrisbra left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

I thought this was added to work around a limitation where it was not possible for wayland to copy from a different window? Is this no longer an issue then?

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Foxe Chen

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Nov 23, 2025, 3:00:52 PM11/23/25

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64-bitman left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

I thought this was added to work around a limitation where it was not possible for wayland to copy from a different window? Is this no longer an issue then?

I'm not sure what you mean by "copy from a different window", but this was added mainly for GNOME environments (Mutter compositor), since it doesn't support the protocols needed to directly access the clipboard. However with OSC 52 in the works, I mostly don't see the benefit of keeping this workaround (it would remove a lot of complexity, possibly unoticed bugs), when a user (in the future) can just use a terminal with OSC 52 support.

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Christian Brabandt

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Nov 23, 2025, 3:20:37 PM11/23/25

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chrisbra left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

okay fine then

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dezza

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Feb 24, 2026, 10:13:49 AMFeb 24

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dezza left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

Related (but indirectly): @64-bitman. Is it correct understood +wayland and +wayland_clipboard is really only for tui vim and no more protocols are planned?

Since the (only) wayland gui (gtk3) has its own wayland compositor and this code is not active during gvim- is it clear enough from naming?

I learnt from the code, but I could see someone being confused if running gvim in wayland, but version said -wayland -wayland_clipboard in red.

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Foxe Chen

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Feb 24, 2026, 10:16:49 AMFeb 24

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64-bitman left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

Related (but indirectly): @64-bitman. Is it correct understood +wayland and +wayland_clipboard is really only for tui vim and no more protocols are planned?

Since the (only) wayland gui (gtk3) has its own wayland compositor and this code is not active during gvim- is it clear enough from naming?

I learnt from the code, but I could see someone being confused if running gvim in wayland, but version said -wayland -wayland_clipboard in red.

Yes it is only for the tui. As for protocols, if any relevant ones becoming mainstream, then i will try adding support for it.

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Sami Farin

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Apr 13, 2026, 7:44:05 AMApr 13

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Safari77 left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

Just remove the focus stealing hack. It does not even work without X11 when running gnome 49 gnome-shell --no-x11.

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dezza

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Apr 13, 2026, 7:48:07 AMApr 13

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dezza left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

@Safari77 cuz you use gnome, please confirm for me if maximizing gvim under X11 GDK_BACKEND=x11 gvim results in a loop of resizing/glitching. I asked 2 people with a real Xorg worked as expected in old as well as new version. I think there might be a gnome specific issue there, it only happened to me on Fedora.

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Sami Farin

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Apr 13, 2026, 7:55:49 AMApr 13

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Safari77 left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

Maybe somebody else could try that, I do not have X11 currently running :)

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dezza

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Apr 13, 2026, 7:57:47 AMApr 13

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dezza left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

@Safari77 this would use xwayland under GNOME which was where I reproduced it.

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mattn

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Apr 15, 2026, 1:00:38 PMApr 15

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mattn left a comment (vim/vim#18795)

Related issue #19815

I plan to remove X11 dependencies for GTK4 GUI.

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