Firefox patches Windows 11 Ctrl+C hang, introduces new bug

Windows 11 and Firefox users who have experienced months of browser freezes when copying text, rejoice: there's finally a patch that eliminates the problem, which has been persistent since May.

Mozilla's patch notes for Firefox version 106.0.3, released yesterday, only includes a couple of items, among them a fix for "an incompatibility" with a Windows 11 22H2 feature called "Suggested Actions" that pop a window up whenever anything is copied to the clipboard.

Suggested Actions were previewed in a Windows Insider build released in May, around a month before the first Firefox user posted a bug report saying that copying text in Windows 11 was causing Firefox to become unresponsive.

For example, whenever copying text, bug reporter Derrick Liu claimed his browser's entire window would hang despite videos and animation continuing to play. Liu said hang times varied, with his extension-heavy default user profile freezing for minutes on end.

After a month of back and forth between Liu and Mozilla developers working to identify the issue, Microsoft responded to the bug report, indicating they were investigating a possible link to Suggested Actions. A short time later, Microsoft pushed a new Windows 11 Insider preview build with a fix for "an issue which was leading to certain apps freezing after a copy action if Suggested Actions was enabled."

• Firefox points the way to eradicating one of the rudest words online: PDF
• Firefox 106 will let you type directly into browser PDFs
• Serious surfer? How to browse like a pro on Firefox
• Mozilla drags Microsoft, Google, Apple for obliterating any form of browser choice

Fast forward to yesterday, Mozilla has published its own update that addresses the issue. Mozilla software engineer Emilio Cobos Álvarez noted in the bug report that the original issue wasn't with Firefox, but the patch should eliminate the hanging while allowing Suggested Actions to keep working. 

The 'fix' is now available

While the latest Firefox patch might have resolved the issue with freezing when copying text, it may have introduced another, this time making it difficult to paste text copied from Firefox into Chromium-based applications, Álvarez noted in the bug report.

The update has led to bug reports filed with Mozilla and the Chromium team, with Mozilla saying the previous patch had created an issue not in Firefox, but again caused an issue in Chromium to bubble up to the surface.

In this case, Álvarez, who filed the bug with the Chromium team after the initial report to Mozilla, said that the issue stems from attempts by Firefox to flush the clipboard early, causing Chromium to not load certain elements of a blob URL despite them being present when pasted into non-Chromium apps.

For those unsure if they want to install a patch that introduces another bug, Mozilla also published a workaround, which simply involves turning Suggested Actions off in Windows 11 - something people won't mind doing judging by the early response to the feature. ®