Copy and paste in Notes often unreliable

The work from @steve626 is very good and would suggest following it

As an aside.

There was a Regular Contributor with Issue Coping and Pasting text or urls into Notes that would not bring the url into Notes as a Clickable Link to web address.

In their situation, they had a Third Party Clipboard Application that really mucked up the whole functionality

Have found at least one link to the Users experience .

Contributor was @Randall_2023 with several Other Contributors involved to try and sort this out

Any credit for fixing or offering solutions to your issue, IMHO belongs to Original User who has offered their time to assist

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254655795?answerId=258701574022&page=1

Yes and thank you

Was very aware McAfee purchased TunnelBear.

That same Third Party Security software company has been either with Directly or Indirectly harassing Users with a Well Crafted Pop Up Notification

See below link from about 175,00 posting on that specific issue

Search - Apple Community

Your Etrecheck report shows a large number of system extensions.

Diagnostics: have you tried booting into Safe Mode to see if the Notes issue goes away? Another thing to try: create a new vanilla user account on the Mac and see if the unwanted behavior continues. These steps may determine if something installed is causing this.

The Etrecheck report also shows:

• You have Configuration Profiles installed. Is your Mac a managed computer? Is it your personal computer?
• It shows Bitdefender virus scanner. That can interfere with the MacOS, it should be completely UNINSTALLED.
• You have aText installed, which automatically expands and manipulates text. That seems suspicious to me given the problems you are having.
• You have iClip installed, which manipulates your clipboard, or does something with it. Also suspicious given the problems you are having.
• You have Tunnelbear, more security software, not needed under a modern MacOS, can only cause harm. Maybe unrelated, but if it interferes somehow with iCloud and you are using Notes in iCloud, it could be related (unlikely, and probably a stretch, but irregardless, this type of security software is superfluous with current MacOS versions).

If I were you, I would (1) perform the diagnostics suggested above, (2) completely UNINSTALL aText, iClip, Tunnelbear, and Bitdefender. Uninstall means using a vendor provided uninstaller (not just moving some files or the app to the trash). You can always reinstall them again if uninstalling them doesn't help.

itsapplemike wrote:

Thanks for your input, great to see you here too P. Phillips. I can imagine how third party clipboard apps can muck things up with copy-paste.

As I mentioned in the OP, I started using iClip only in January, whereas the problem is at least 4-plus years old.

Much has changed since about macOS 10.15 Catalina released in 2019 and possibly even more so since possibly macOS 10.14 Mojave

I'll try using Notes in Safe Mode over this weekend and see what happens.

Safe Mode will also eliminate Third Party Software, extensions and drivers from loading. It will only load the Minimum amount of Core Apple Processes to allow the the computer to function at a reduced Level of Performance 

As an aside, are you in agreement that VPN is no longer required in macOS?

VPNs are only really doing what they are Intended to do if working from Home and logging into the Company Network

That or connecting to your Bank, Investment or such similar type of Secure Environment

refer to below for additional reading on what seems be what Commercial VPNs are actually going

https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29

If my memory is correct, TunnelBear was purchased by a Large AntiVirus company a few years ago

So one can only infer certain things when AV Owner gets their hands on VPNs service