When i make a square selection on frame 1 to copy a shape, then move to another to paste it - it does not paste in place, but in the middle. And the selection square disapears when i sitch to a new frame - in tutorials it seems to stay, so maybe that is the real problem. I am on a mac. Trying to help my young son get into it, any help is appreciated!
That’s odd. I remember fixing a bug like that but that was four years ago and I don’t think the bugged version was ever released. I certainly seems to work as intended for me in our current version 0.7.2.
Do you happen to use any kind of clipboard management features/apps, anything that monitors/manipulates the clipboard in the background? If that’s the case, there might be some unintentional interaction there.
If not, could you let us know the version of Pencil2D you are using (You can check under Help → About in the main menu if you’re unsure) and whether you are working with a bitmap layer (
) or a vector layer (
)? And just to double-check the details, what you’re doing is create selection with 
select tool on frame 1 → copy → navigate to another frame → paste, and it ends up in the centre of the canvas instead of the original position, correct?
As far as the disappearing selection rectangle is concerned, that was a change in the most recent version in order to fix a bug. #1936 has the details if you’re curious, but I doubt it has anything to do with the issue you’re describing.
Thank you for responding, I’m on a mac m1 on a fresh install of 0.7.2 (see below)
I do use a clipboard manager through the Alfred app, turned it of and restarted Pencil2D but same result.
Yes, the problem is just like you decribed in your double-check above. Bitmap is the problem - but tried Vector now and works as intended (!).
Interestingly, if i copy and paste frames in a bitmap layer on the actual timeline (instead of selecing specific objects), it stays put.
So, problem remains, but thank you for starting to look into it!
Version: v0.7.2
commit: a014b2f5321d37411b2e116a4f29aea7e94f8844 date: 2026-03-31_12:58:50
Operating System: macOS 26.0 CPU Architecture: x86_64 Qt Version: 5.15.18
Thank you for sharing those results. Based on your findings, I looked into the inner workings of our clipboard mechanism again and noticed there seems to be a difference in how macOS handles clipboard data after all that might render my previous fix mentioned above ineffective. I strongly suspect that is the cause of your problem, now I just need to come up with an alternative way to deal with the issue…
Btw, I neglected to mention it in my previous post, but the vector layer is unfortunately in a bit of a sorry state right now since the people who originally worked on it left the project some time ago, so we don’t particularly recommend relying on it. Just so you’re aware.
I’ll get back to you once I’ve made progress on a solution. For the time being, if there are no other keyframes in between those which you are copying and pasting from/to, you should be able to use the Edit → Paste from previous frame (in the main menu) functionality as a workaround.
Hi, sorry for the wait. I’ve prepared a change that should fix your issue, you can download a build of Pencil2D with this change here. (It’s based on a current development snapshot of the software so there are some other changes as well.) Please give it a shot and let me know if this resolves the issue for you.