Discussion
Update on copy/paste being broken on GIMP/Inkscape on macOS (and as it turns out, TIFF loading is also broken on Windows): They won't fix it, because their image loader is legacy on macOS and Windows, but also there are no plans to bring the non-legacy image loader to those platforms.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/work_items/6569#note_2853567
I guess GTK is now deprecated and unmaintained on anything that isn't Linux, and with it every app that uses GTK.
@lina but they saying they are bring glycin for both plaatforms and unified the hole thing
Glycin is planned to be made buildable and functional on macOS and Windows, it just that the glycin loaders will be unified to the library itself and without sandboxing.
@lina From all I saw bringing the new image loader (glycin) to macOS and Windows seems to be in the works. In her latest blog post the glycin dev explicitly talked about bringing support to these platforms: https://blogs.gnome.org/sophieh/2026/08/07/gnome-fellowship-july-2026/
@june That's good to hear.
Still though, pasting images being broken on macOS for half a decade, and the issue not even being triaged properly, and being told incorrect information when I try to help...
> but also there are no plans to bring the non-legacy image loader to those platforms.
That is not true, the next upcoming v2.2 release of Glycin (= the non-legacy image loader) already includes the necessary changes to support both macOS and Windows as well.
My GNOME app uses Glycin, and it runs finely on those platforms.
@haeckerfelix Sounds like not everyone got the memo then...
@lina even as a Linux users try to steer away from GTK apps where possible due to many of them not integrating well if you don't use Gnome, and doesn't look like that will change anytime soon
I think not everybody is up to date planned around Glycin roadmap.
Edit: macOS and Windows support is planned
@tytan652 Ngl I feel like every single time I've tried to get any GNOME/GTK bug reported/fixed it's been a struggle to get anyone to care.
@inkscape Are you aware of this position? Copy/pasting images is broken on macOS for many years, and GTK's upstream policy is apparently that they don't support it.
This isn't the first time GTK has caused issues on non-Linux platforms (Inkscape used to be unusably slow on macOS just a couple years ago)... perhaps it's time to consider migrating to a different toolkit that officially supports Windows/macOS?
Edit: Looks like glycin *is* coming to Windows/macOS after all... but honestly, half a decade with image paste broken on macOS isn't a good look either way...
@lina Don't they still use GTK2 though?
@Luna No, it's GTK3 with the GTK4 migration ongoing.
https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/work_items/4802
The one fairly popular app that I know of which was stuck on GTK2 was Ardour. These days they have forked it into an internal vendored version called ydk (so they can maintain it).
@lina It has long since became a GNOME Tool Kit anyway, no?
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