Cannot paste image from Windows clipboard into Codex CLI on WSL (v0.66.0) Body

Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened Dec 9, 2025 by 4erdenko Closed Dec 9, 2025
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of Codex is running?

0.66.0

What subscription do you have?

Pro

Which model were you using?

_No response_

What platform is your computer?

_No response_

What issue are you seeing?

When running the OpenAI Codex CLI inside WSL, I cannot paste an image from the Windows clipboard into the chat.
Codex prints Failed to paste image: no image on clipboard even though the Windows clipboard clearly contains a bitmap
screenshot and it can be pasted into other Windows apps.

This looks similar to the WSL paste fix from PR #6793 but still happens on v0.66.0.

Actual Behavior

Codex prints one or more errors like:

Failed to paste image: no image on clipboard: The clipboard contents were not available in the requested format or the clipboard is empty.

The message is repeated on every attempt to paste the image.

At the same time, Windows clipboard history shows the screenshot, and pasting the same clipboard contents into other
Windows applications works as expected.

Screenshots of the terminal and clipboard history are attached to this issue.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Start Codex CLI in WSL:

```bash
codex --yolo

  1. In Windows, press Win + Shift + S and select an area to capture.
  2. Verify the screenshot is in the Windows clipboard:
  • Open Windows clipboard history (Win + V) and see a preview of the screenshot.
  • Pasting into another app (e.g. Paint) works.
  1. Focus the terminal window where Codex is running.
  2. Try to paste the image into the Codex composer using the configured shortcut

(for me: [Ctrl+Alt+V / Ctrl+V – whichever you actually used]).

  1. Observe the error messages printed by Codex.

What is the expected behavior?

Expected Behavior

Codex should detect the image in the Windows clipboard and attach it to the current message (or at least acknowledge that
an image was received), without reporting that the clipboard is empty or in an unsupported format.

Additional information

Additional Details

  • The problem reproduces consistently.
  • The issue occurs even when:
  • Codex has just been started.
  • Only a single screenshot is in the clipboard.
  • MCP startup errors are also shown in the terminal (jira-pik-remote, github), but they seem unrelated to clipboard

handling.

If you need any extra logs or a special build with more diagnostics, I can help test it.

<img width="1130" height="695" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ae36da98-889f-4e87-9c34-bff51908328d" />

<img width="1115" height="628" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ddf53cf5-5d7e-4a55-8735-c03e28124b49" />

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 8 months ago

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

  • #7599
  • #6140
  • #6974
  • #6080
  • #6364

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4erdenko · 8 months ago

Like in #7599

Fix:

sudo nano /etc/wsl.conf
[interop]
enabled = true
appendWindowsPath = true
wsl --shutdown
3lvin-Kc · 5 months ago

i am getting this same issue and i am on my windows machine. no matter how many time i tried to paste prompts here but it just throw error , nothing else.

forgrabbit · 4 months ago
i am getting this same issue and i am on my windows machine. no matter how many time i tried to paste prompts here but it just throw error , nothing else.

try Ctrl + Shift + V