I’m seeing what appears to be the same issue on iOS 27 and macOS 27.
Universal Clipboard was stuck in one direction only:
- Mac → iPhone: worked
- iPhone → Mac: did not work
- iPhone → Mac normal Handoff: worked
When copying something on the iPhone and pressing Cmd-V on the Mac, the Mac simply pasted whatever was previously in its own local clipboard.
I tested both very simple text (a single word copied from the iPhone) and a photo copied from the Photos app, with the same result.
Normal Handoff from the iPhone to the Mac was working. For example, opening a webpage in Safari on the iPhone caused the Handoff icon to appear on the Mac (in Chrome, which is my default browser), so the Mac was clearly seeing Handoff activity from the iPhone.
While the problem was reproducible I tried:
- Turning Handoff off and back on on both the iPhone and Mac
- Airplane Mode on/off on the iPhone
- Restarting the macOS
pboard process - Restarting
sharingd - Restarting
useractivityd - Explicitly setting
ClipboardSharingEnabled to true in com.apple.coreservices.useractivityd - Testing plain text as well as a photo
- Confirming that Universal Clipboard continued to work in the opposite direction, Mac → iPhone
None of those restored iPhone → Mac Universal Clipboard.
I also watched useractivityd and sharingd using macOS unified logging while reproducing the problem. The Mac continued to see what appeared to be the iPhone as a nearby paired device. Among other things I saw:
Paired yes
WiFiP2P
NearbyInfo received activity level: 0xb after decryption
IDS: Request to block until connected
=> Not blocking, already connected
However, when I copied something on the iPhone, I did not see an apparent clipboard/PBOARD transaction on the Mac. Filtering specifically for pboard, clipboard, pasteboard, etc. produced nothing when attempting iPhone → Mac.
I then restarted only the iPhone. Immediately after the restart Universal Clipboard still did not work. I waited a few more seconds and noticed the iPhone’s Wi-Fi indicator go from a weak connection to full signal. At that point iPhone → Mac Universal Clipboard started working again. It now works correctly in both directions.
The Mac was never restarted.
So in my case at least, this seems consistent with something on the iPhone side getting into a state where normal Handoff still works but Universal Clipboard from iPhone → Mac does not. Restarting the iPhone restored it, whereas toggling Handoff and even Airplane Mode did not.
I’ve experienced intermittent Universal Clipboard reliability for several years, so I’m not sure whether the underlying problem is entirely new to iOS 27, but this particular one-way failure was very reproducible.
