System tower · floor

How to copy and paste on a Mac, files and folders included

Two keys, and then a surprise. How to copy and paste on a mac is Command-C and Command-V, which is the same pair of keys Windows uses with a different modifier. The surprise comes one step later, when the same habit is applied to a file: cut it, and nothing happens. That is not a mistyped shortcut. Apple documents the difference plainly, and it is the part worth reading.

Three routes to the same clipboard, and it is worth having all three because they fail differently. The keyboard is fastest; the shortcut menu needs no menu bar; and the Edit menu is the one that answers a question the other two cannot.

Now the part that is not the same as Windows.

So how do you move a file. Apple gives two answers and neither of them is a keyboard shortcut. The first is to drag and drop. The second it spells out as a method in its own right: “Use the copy and delete method: select the item, press Command-C to copy, go to the destination folder and press Command-V to paste, then delete the original item.” Three deliberate steps rather than one gesture — and the last of them is yours to make, which means you can check the copy arrived before anything disappears.

Which leaves the question that comes next: how do you tell whether a thing can be pasted at all. Apple’s answer is that the software has already told you, in a way that is easy to miss.

If the Paste command is dimmed or unavailable, you can’t paste content in that location.

That sentence appears twice in Apple’s own instructions, and it makes the Edit menu into a diagnostic rather than a slower way to press Command-V. The full statement is worth having: “Each app determines which items it can cut, copy, or paste, and when and where those actions are possible in the app. When cut, copy, or paste isn’t possible, its menu item is dimmed so that you can’t choose it or use its keyboard shortcut.” A shortcut that appears to do nothing and a greyed-out menu item are the same fact, and only one of them is visible.

The first item on that list is the one that turns an afternoon around, because it looks nothing like a formatting problem. Read-only is exactly what it says: the drive will give you everything on it and take nothing back. Apple states the rule without softening it, and the formats it names as workable are APFS, Mac OS Extended and exFAT.

One newer thing worth knowing about, because it changes what the clipboard is. Apple: “Learn how to use Clipboard history in macOS Tahoe or later to browse through text, images, links, and files you recently copied.” A clipboard that holds exactly one thing is the assumption behind the habit of pasting immediately and not getting distracted. On a Mac running that version, that assumption no longer holds.

The floors below take it four ways: the three routes, pasting without the formatting, moving files when Cut is not offered, and the reasons a paste is refused.

What this tower will not do

It will not tell you Command-X is broken. Apple says cut is not offered for files and folders, and names two replacements for it.

It will not suggest a driver to write to an NTFS drive before saying what the limit is. The rule is Apple’s, it is stated plainly, and knowing it is what stops the afternoon.

And it will not treat a greyed-out menu item as a fault. It is the app answering the question, and the Edit menu is where that answer is visible. What holds instead is simple: the three routes, the note that files and folders cannot be cut, the copy-and-delete method and the NTFS limit are quoted from Apple’s own documentation, listed below.