Paste text even when prohibited in macOS (password dialogs etc)

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Dae

I wrote a tiny AppleScript application which pastes text into fields which do not allow Cmd+V pasting (like password prompts). This may come in handy when working through VNC/remote desktop or virtualization software (such as Apple Screen Sharing, Parallels Desktop etc). Personally I use it to type in my password into the login screen of the Windows virtual machine.

cant-paste-password

To put it in simple terms: the app uses the virtual keyboard to type in the text from your clipboard. It tricks the program that asks for your input into thinking that you’re actually typing on your keyboard.

The downside of the app is that it occupies space in the Dock.

Download Force Paste.app (~15KB). Don’t forget to drag it into your Dock!

(Advanced users may want to use it from the Script menu rather than the Dock. Download main.scpt and put it to ~/Library/Scripts/ directory).

GitHub repository: https://github.com/EugeneDae/Force-Paste

Important note to macOS Mojave users: if you’re getting a “not allowed to send keystrokes” error, simply add Force Paste.app to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Accessibility. See issue #7.

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81 Responses to Paste text even when prohibited in macOS (password dialogs etc)

  1. Dwayne says:
    March 4, 2014 at 23:25

    how do you actually use this little app?

    Reply
  2. Oliver says:
    April 4, 2014 at 17:32

    Thank you so much Dae, this is a genius script. I just got a new external drive and was horrified I couldn’t paste my randomly generated 50 character/digit/symbol/upper-case/lower-case password! You have just saved me at least half-an-hour!

    kudos!

    Reply
  3. George says:
    August 19, 2014 at 01:47

    Thank you so much for creating this and making it freely available. Now I can keep using long random passwords without going insane. A lifesaver.

    Reply
  4. Kelvin says:
    November 4, 2014 at 09:35

    This little app is awesome! The perfect companion to 1Password!

    Reply
  5. Paolo G. Giarrusso says:
    November 9, 2014 at 14:54

    Thanks a lot!

    Reply
  6. Brian Aker says:
    November 23, 2014 at 19:00

    Hi!

    Do you have the entire project pushed up to github anywhere?

    Thanks,
    -Brian

    Reply
  7. Andy Ibanez says:
    November 24, 2014 at 23:55

    Fantastic tool Dae.

    I really hate it how we can’t copy paste into the text field whenever we are asked for a password, like when working with certificates or encrypting disk images.

    I will try to fork the project to do it a little bit more friendly. Thanks a lot for the tool and for releasing the source code.

    Reply
  8. Curtis Jackson says:
    December 14, 2014 at 16:45

    Thank you thank you thank you thank you! from a 1Password user.

    Reply
  9. Max says:
    February 18, 2015 at 01:41

    Great script Dae! thanks a lot

    Reply
  10. miguel says:
    May 6, 2015 at 04:56

    is there anyway to use an app to map the trigger to a function key (or any other key for that matter)?

    Reply
  11. Adam says:
    May 6, 2015 at 17:10

    I love you for this!

    Reply
  12. Ivan says:
    May 22, 2015 at 08:17

    First I didn’t realise that the script has to be dragged to dock. After doing that – it just works.

    Passwords copied to clipboard from password manager are getting pasted to pass field for encrypted images without any problem.

    The easiest and the most elegant solution that I could find by far.

    Thanks a lot Dae:)

    Reply
  13. Gene says:
    May 26, 2015 at 00:20

    Hi,

    Great tool but it did not work for me on my MacBook Pro with the latest OS X.

    I figured out that I have to type at least one character in password field and then delete it before Force Paste will paste into the field. Now Force Paste saves me a lot of time.

    Thanks!

    Reply
    • Dae says:
      May 26, 2015 at 01:05

      Hi Gene, I also use MacBook Pro with the latest OS X 10.10.3 and Force Paste works straight away for me. I wonder why it doesn’t in your case?

      If you could record a small screencast using LICEcap or a similar app, possibly it’d give me a hint.

      Reply
  14. David Joerg says:
    September 4, 2015 at 20:58

    THANK YOU!

    Reply

  15. Pingback: » Apple:Why can't I paste into the password dialog when mounting an encrypted disk image?

  16. sleepcircle says:
    November 18, 2015 at 02:22

    Thanks! Super cool. I will treasure this always.

    Reply
  17. Rosa says:
    December 31, 2015 at 18:43

    You are absolutely a divine send!!! Thank you soooo much!!!

    Reply
  18. Max_G says:
    January 15, 2016 at 11:06

    Doe this also work in El Capitan?

    Reply
  19. IT H8r says:
    January 30, 2016 at 05:04

    Works very nicely in Citrix where they have the copy/paste disabled and you really don’t want to type that whole stinking URL into MS Explorer just to use some web site that is non-standard.

    Used this app and it typed directly to my Citrix window from the clipboard. Sweet!

    Reply
  20. Dan Gildea says:
    February 8, 2016 at 15:37

    Used LastPass this weekend to create really complex passwords for all my internet accounts, including Google Apps.

    After restarting my computer, my local Google Drive.app asked for the new password.
    Of course, I wasn’t able to just cut and paste this new incredibly complex password into the field in Google Drive.app.

    I went on a hunt and found Force Paste:
    https://dae.me/blog/1741/paste-text-even-when-prohibited-in-os-x-password-dialogs-etc/
    It solved my problem immediately.

    Reply
  21. Clark Carneal says:
    June 23, 2016 at 21:41

    This is a fabulous little app. Thank you so much!

    Reply
  22. Rick B. says:
    July 18, 2016 at 18:09

    This is a very helpful and awesome tool.

    I’m trying to paste a complex password that uses ‘ü’, but when I copy it and ForcePaste does its thing, it’s change to a regular ‘a’

    Is there a work around for this?

    Reply
    • Dae says:
      July 20, 2016 at 22:41

      Thanks, but I’m afraid this can’t be fixed easily. The problem lies in AppleScript’s “keystroke”, which only outputs characters immediately available on a typical English keyboard. It won’t type Russian letters either. I’m afraid I can’t do anything about that :/

      Reply
  23. Richard Smith says:
    August 1, 2016 at 14:55

    Thank you so much. A great tool and saved me hours of work. Truly appreciated !

    Reply
  24. John Basile says:
    August 23, 2016 at 20:43

    Dae
    Love the App. I have a dialog that comes up every hour.. ask for my credentials, name & password… royal pain in the ass.

    Anyway, is there a script/app to use a keyboard short cut that enters the cursor in the userName field, paste in the name, then goes on to the password field.. and past in the password from your script…then hits return…boy would that be nice!

    Reply
  25. Patrick J. says:
    August 29, 2016 at 01:19

    Amazing app! Drag the Force Paste.app into your desktop dock and remember to use the shortcut: press command + V together, at the same time, to force paste to a secure login box. Highly recommended app for Mac OS X users!

    Reply
  26. Remco says:
    September 28, 2016 at 18:52

    Thank you so much for this! I need to work with a website of which the makers are under the illusion that pasting is “insecure” so they prefer the user to manually enter all info. This is a life saver.

    Reply
  27. Steve says:
    November 9, 2016 at 11:44

    Does not work osx 10.6.8

    Reply
    • Dae says:
      November 9, 2016 at 22:47

      I don’t have any 10.6.8 systems at my disposal anymore, but I think it should work. What happens exactly when you click the app, it doesn’t start or it just doesn’t do anything? Can you open AppleScript Editor, copy/paste this code and click run?

      Reply
      • Steve says:
        November 10, 2016 at 09:55

        I am not sure this is a place for all I know is the app crashes with the following report which I hope may help

        Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
        Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0xfffffffffffffff8
        Crashed Thread: Unknown
        (remaining lines stripped by dae)

        Reply
        • Dae says:
          November 10, 2016 at 10:05

          Thanks, Steve. I think if you manage compile it yourself on your system, it will work. Here’s how you can do this:

          Step 1. Download the code and extract the contents of the archive into a folder on your Desktop called “Force-Paste-master”.

          Step 2. Click the magnifying glass icon at the top-right corner of the screen to open spotlight search and use it to open Terminal.

          Step 3. In Terminal, run the following command one after another:

          cd ~/Desktop/Force-Paste-master/
          chmod +x build.sh
          ./build.sh

          If everything goes well, you’ll find the app in that directory on your Desktop.

          Reply
  28. russell says:
    January 17, 2017 at 20:49

    I have been problems with OS X sierra crashing my copy and paste between apps. It only pastes in the same app it copied from. I thought I would give this a shot, and low and behold, when Sierra fails to paste, force paste actually works!~

    Thanks.

    Reply
  29. Chris says:
    February 13, 2017 at 19:25

    Trying to change my remote management password but can’t get to paste. Just keeps the same old password no matter what. I moved to dock, tried script. Same result. Am I doing something wrong or is it still working for everyone?

    OS Sierra, latest.

    Thanks,

    Chris

    Reply
  30. jeb says:
    April 27, 2017 at 11:31

    need it to paste the windows 8 password running in a virtual machine but isn’t working

    Reply
  31. DanielB says:
    July 27, 2017 at 11:05

    Hi Dae,

    Thank you very much for this tool which is currently a lifesaver for me and speeds up a very repetitive workflow.

    I was wondering if it would be possible for me to add some basic text replacement functionality to the script?

    The tool I use does not support OS X’s native text replacement, and I would like to accomplish something like that.

    Example: copied text contains “cuz”, Force Paste corrects that and pastes “cause”.

    It would be great if you could provide some insight on that.

    Thanks in advance!

    Reply
    • Dae says:
      July 27, 2017 at 15:00

      Hi Daniel – yes, of course. Clone the repo, open main.scpt in your favorite code editor, grab the code of findAndReplaceInText() function from here and use it on input variable, for example:

      set input to findAndReplaceInText(input, "cuz", "cause")

      In Terminal, cd to the working directory and run ./build.sh to build the app with your changes.

      Reply
  32. Hobbes says:
    September 1, 2017 at 16:09

    Fantastic. I tried to add a delay of 50ms between each stroke (doing this over a VDI connection which misses key strokes if they’re too fast…) and save it as a .app, but this does not work. I suppose it’s not that simple to add 50ms to the .app version?

    Reply
  33. john says:
    September 7, 2017 at 19:18

    Awesome little app! Thank you.

    Reply
  34. Ceridwen says:
    September 29, 2017 at 21:45

    I’m trying to run this script on 10.12.6, and while I can build it, when I try to run it from the Finder I never see a dock icon. I can run it from the terminal (open “Force Paste.app”) but it only pastes into the terminal there, not into the password dialog I need it to paste into.

    Reply
  35. Karthik says:
    April 13, 2018 at 02:34

    Thanks for this awesome tool…really saved lot of time for me and my team.
    In the applescript you had provided, you had used set numbers_key_codes to {82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92}
    What is the logic behind using “key code” in the script, trying to understand…

    Reply
  36. John Baker says:
    October 23, 2018 at 03:21

    It still works, and it works great! A real time and frustration saver! Thank you!

    Reply
  37. Erwin says:
    January 17, 2019 at 10:35

    Wow thanks… works perfectly

    Reply
  38. Scott says:
    April 22, 2019 at 11:25

    Hi Dae. Can’t seem to get ForcePaste to work on Mojave. Getting this error even after dragging into to Privacy/Accessibility:

    Force Paste is not allowed to send keystrokes.
    System Events got an error: Force Paste is not allowed to send keystrokes. (1002)

    I’m not advanced with script etc so that probably doesn’t help. Any fix would be much appreciated.

    Reply
    • Michal says:
      October 21, 2019 at 12:25

      I have same issue. Any help? THX

      Reply
      • Matt Larson says:
        November 6, 2020 at 18:28

        I was experiencing the same issue after updating to the latest version of macOS Catalina (10.15.7). Force Paste had been working on my Catalina system previously.

        The advice given on the bottom of the GitHub page regarding this issue is good, but I had to UNCHECK the box next to Force Paste.app in Privacy > Accessibility and CHECK it again.

        Reply
  39. Picard says:
    May 4, 2019 at 14:44

    If you insert

    key code 36

    as line 3 from bottom, the script will hit the enter button for you as well.

    That is:

    set numbers_key_codes to {82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92}

    set input to do shell script “pbpaste”

    if (input is not missing value and length of input is less than 250) then
    tell application “System Events”
    repeat with char in the characters of input
    try
    key code numbers_key_codes’s item (char + 1)
    on error
    keystroke char
    end try
    end repeat
    key code 36
    end tell
    end if

    Reply
  40. Mark says:
    May 15, 2019 at 14:56

    Force paste works about 99% of the time for me, but everyone once and awhile it will not paste the correct characters in. So for example if the password has an @ it will paste a 2, or if the password has a ! in it, it will put a 1. It also is not honoring capitalized letters either when it doesn’t honor the @ or !, any ideas as to what could be causing this?

    Reply
  41. Adam says:
    June 29, 2019 at 01:54

    Hi,
    This little app is awesome but I’d like to ask is it possible to adjust the script that way that the app will paste every time the same key string (e.g. my very long password) whenever I press the app icon? At my work I’m using many applications and I have to type my password every time I’m logging in which is very time consuming. Now before I use Force Paste I have to copy my password from text file using CMD+C. I’d like Force Paste to remember my password all the time.
    Thank you very much in advance for your help and feedback.

    Reply
    • Dae says:
      June 29, 2019 at 01:59

      Hi Adam, here you go:

      set input to "mylongpassword"

set numbers_key_codes to {82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92}

tell application "System Events"
	repeat with char in the characters of input
		try
			key code numbers_key_codes's item (char + 1)
		on error
			keystroke char
		end try
	end repeat
end tell

      Change mylongpassword to whatever you want.

      Fork the repo from GitHub, replace the contents of main.scpt with the code above and run the build script.

      Reply
      • Adam says:
        July 2, 2019 at 21:39

        Hi Dae,
        thank you very much for your help. The script you’ve written above works fine and thanks to it I’m saving a lot of time now.

        I tested another script which is working the same way:

        on run {input, parameters}

        tell application “System Events” to keystroke “mylongpassword”

        return input
        end run

        Reply
  42. Kurt says:
    March 18, 2020 at 22:15

    I’ve used this app for a while, and really liked it. Thanks for writing it! I makes me feel like I’m doing my part to stick it to websites that think they know better than me. Petty of me! I digress…

    So now I found a website that somehow in Safari has managed to block force paste! I am dismayed! Am I supposed to type gibberish characters in one by one? What are we, animals? :P

    I’d forward the page, but it’s behind a pre-registration step and I can’t share the pre-registration details. Have you encountered anything like this in Safari before?

    Note: I was able to force-paste in Chrome instead.

    Reply
  43. hackeradmin779 says:
    August 14, 2020 at 20:10

    you think you can hack me wrong apple script editor virus are just a secret i’m from the B.EI

    Reply
  44. Shawn says:
    December 17, 2020 at 20:51

    Thank-you so much!

    Reply
  45. Filip says:
    June 28, 2021 at 11:06

    Great tool, thank you!

    Reply
  46. sk says:
    August 31, 2021 at 20:43

    sadly this wouldn’t work on big sur.. kept getting an error that said it wasn’t allowed to paste

    Reply
  47. John Martin says:
    July 14, 2022 at 02:12

    Thank you so much for creating this tiny bit of code.
    I got it to run on macOS Mojave simply by hitting the + button in System Preferences – Accessibility and adding Force Paste to the list.

    Very Grateful

    John Martin

    Reply
  48. hagai says:
    May 16, 2023 at 17:52

    thanks for this great script!
    I have a problem with Hebrew , its paste “??????”
    any chance to fix it?

    Reply
  49. Bob J says:
    August 21, 2023 at 21:49

    Thanks. It works well but if I copy text with new lines, when I paste it ‘presses enter’ for each of those spots where the text ends before the new line. I want to just copy everything and paste everything without it pressing enter or thinking it needs to capture the enter key at all. How do I do this?

    Reply
  50. Elly says:
    November 13, 2023 at 01:52

    anyone else having problems pasting tabs?

    up until right before i updated the macos on my mac with M1 chip to sonoma (14.1.1), force-paste was able to paste tabs. now that no longer works. the script seems to paste each character up until the first tab it encounters and then it aborts

    Reply
  51. Bob J says:
    November 22, 2023 at 21:41

    Dae, can you review my question?

    Reply
  52. Dustin says:
    March 15, 2024 at 18:16

    I wanted to use Forcee Paste but my corporate settings on Sonoma are blocking it because it’s not signed.

    Reply

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