macOS: Phantom Clipboard Input on Neovim Startup

[myself379]

First, thank you mitchellh (removed tagging, sorry!) for creating Ghostty—it's an amazing terminal!

MacOS Sequoia 15.4 (24E248)

Ghostty 1.1.3

Version
  - version: 1.1.3
  - channel: stable
Build Config
  - Zig version: 0.13.0
  - build mode : builtin.OptimizeMode.ReleaseFast
  - app runtime: apprt.Runtime.none
  - font engine: font.main.Backend.coretext
  - renderer   : renderer.Metal
  - libxev     : main.Backend.kqueue

My ghostty configuration

#~/.config/ghostty/config
shell-integration = zsh

font-family = "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Mono"
font-size = 18
font-feature = -calt, -liga, -dlig
cursor-invert-fg-bg = true

Issue

When starting Neovim, the contents of my clipboard are automatically "pasted" into the buffer. This happens even without any explicit paste command.

Steps to Reproduce

Copy text (e.g., hjkl) to clipboard.

Open Neovim—the clipboard content (hjkl) is inserted automatically.

Similarly, opening a file (e.g., ~/.config/ghostty/config) overwrites its contents with the clipboard text.

Observations

Isolating the Cause:

Tested with plugins disabled → Issue only occurs when theme is active.

Other plugins work fine; the problem seems theme-specific, or invoking the "vim.cmd" or "vim.api.nvim_command"

Ghostty vs. Tmux:

The issue does not occur in Tmux, only in Ghostty.

Attachments
I’ve included a video demonstrating the behavior (apologies for the quality—10MB upload limit).

Let me know if you need additional details!

neovim-ghostty-phantom-input-compress-2.mov

I'm using Neovim version v0.11.0

NVIM v0.11.0
Build type: Release
LuaJIT 2.1.1744014795

-- Catppuccin theme, loaded by lazy.nvim
return {
	"catppuccin/nvim",
	name = "catppuccin",
	lazy = false,
	priority = 1000,
	enabled = true,
	config = function()
		local catppuccin = require("catppuccin")
		-- local macchiato = require("catppuccin.palettes").get_palette("macchiato")
		local frappe = require("catppuccin.palettes").get_palette("frappe")
		local mocha = require("catppuccin.palettes").get_palette("mocha")
		local bright_orange = "#ffaa00"

		catppuccin.setup({
			transparent_background = false,
			flavor = "mocha",
			background = { -- :h background
				light = "latte",
				dark = "mocha",
			},
			no_italic = false,
			no_bold = false,
			color_overrides = {
				mocha = {
					-- base = "#000000",
					-- mantle = "#000000",
					crust = bright_orange,
				},
			},
			highlight_overrides = {
				mocha = function(colors)
					return {
						-- Pmenu = { bg = colors.base }, -- Use colors.base palette in Pmenu background, based on "flavor"
						-- WildMenu = { bg = mocha.crust }, -- command-line pop-up menu
						Pmenu = { bg = mocha.crust }, -- completion pop-up menu
						NormalFloat = { bg = mocha.crust }, -- LSP documentation menu
						DapStopped = { fg = colors.none, bg = frappe.mantle }, -- Use frappe for dap_ui
						-- vim.api.nvim_set_hl(0, 'DapStopped', { bg = '#31353f' })
					}
				end,
			},
			integrations = {
				treesitter = true,
				native_lsp = {
					enabled = true,
					virtual_text = {
						errors = { "italic" },
						hints = { "italic" },
						warnings = { "italic" },
						information = { "italic" },
						ok = { "italic" },
					},
					underlines = {
						errors = { "underline" },
						hints = { "underline" },
						warnings = { "underline" },
						information = { "underline" },
						ok = { "underline" },
					},
					inlay_hints = {
						background = true,
					},
				},
				illuminate = true,
				indent_blankline = {
					enabled = true,
				},
				dap = true,
				dap_ui = true,
			},
		})

		vim.fn.sign_define("DapStopped", { text = "", linehl = "DapStopped", numhl = "DapStopped" })
		-- vim.cmd([[colorscheme catppuccin]])
		vim.api.nvim_command("colorscheme catppuccin")
		-- vim.opt.colorscheme = "catppuccin"
	end,
}

[taylrfnt]

First, please don’t ping Mitchell or other Ghostty maintainers. Doing so subscribes them automatically to a boatload of notifications through GitHub’s no-so-great notification defaults and generally just clogs up their inboxes as well as jumping the Discussions flow.

I use Neovim and Ghostty daily on macOS, and have never seen this issue. Can you reproduce this issue with the Terminal Inspector open and share the output of the I/O tab? That may give us a better idea of what’s going on.

Side note of my own…. I am not sure how this post didn’t get the Issue Triage template applied to it. I just searched and apparently select platforms don’t support the form yet (mobile is the only one explicitly mentioned but I suspect this wasn’t written on mobile). Thanks for sharing all this info, it pretty much covers what the template requires. Do you mind also mentioning how you created this so we can look into it?

[myself379]

Thanks, taylrfnt! I’ve removed the tag—appreciate the heads-up.

After further testing, I’ve noticed the same issue occurs in iTerm and Kitty, which makes me suspect this is tied to Neovim v0.11.0.

I’m documenting this here in case others run into the same problem. For reference, it seems related to require("vim.termcap") (see neovim/neovim#33127). Another issue neovim/neovim#33148

Since this isn’t Ghostty-specific, feel free to close the thread. For context, I’ve attached a recording with Terminal Inspector (comparing Ghostty and Tmux).

ghostty-inspector-neovim.mp4

[rhodes-b]

I would report an issue in the specific plugin that is causing the issue since it is happening in other terminals

[myself379]

Thanks! I continue this issue in another thread

neovim/neovim#33148