Clipboard image paste failure in Codex CLI on Arch Linux despite text content
What version of Codex CLI is running?
codex-cli 0.106.0
What subscription do you have?
free tier
Which model were you using?
gpt-5.3-codex
What platform is your computer?
Linux 6.18.13-arch1-1 x86_64 unknown
What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?
kitty
What issue are you seeing?
Failed to paste image: no image on clipboard: The clipboard contents were not available in the requested format or the clipboard is empty." But clipboard has text like "div className="hero-actions">". Happens when trying to paste during frontend build checks or similar. Attached screenshot.
Network errors reported elsewhere, so focusing on this clipboard mismatch.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Copy text to clipboard (anything u want).
Run Codex CLI command that triggers paste in kitty.
Error shows despite non-empty clipboard.
No thread ID, but consistent on Arch setup.
What is the expected behavior?
Should detect text vs image and handle accordingly, or clarify if image-only paste is intended.
Possibly related to #11741 but this is clipboard-specific.
Additional information
Installed via AUR openai-codex-bin
<img width="1238" height="296" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/290c25c2-b71b-4a46-b6e3-037673fc30f9" />
<img width="1186" height="150" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3b60c0cb-7915-4d94-9076-4b56219b6b08" />
3 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
Powered by Codex Action
If you're running Codex CLI over SSH on a headless/remote Linux machine (no real X display), this might be relevant — cc-clip v0.3.0 adds Codex CLI support.
It sets up a headless Xvfb with a Go-based X11 clipboard bridge that claims CLIPBOARD ownership and serves image data from your local Mac clipboard through an SSH tunnel. Codex's arboard sees it as a normal X11 clipboard.
For local Linux with a real X display, the root cause is likely different (arboard/X11 format negotiation), but if the headless/SSH case applies to you, this is a workaround. MIT licensed: https://github.com/ShunmeiCho/cc-clip
clipaste fixes this. Tiny background daemon that normalizes the screenshot clipboard — adds a file URL so Cmd+V works, and adds the PNGf type so Ctrl+V works.
Also supports SSH remote paste via
clipaste ssh-setup user@host.