Assigned Access Kiosk and copy/paste

Question

I have a kiosk set up on Windows 10 Pro with allowing Edge "As a public browser" and I find that users can copy and paste to and from the address bar, but they are unable to copy/paste to/from a fillable PDF or some webpages like google.com's search box. However, they can copy from the address bar and paste into Word Online or OneNote Online, but they can't copy from those apps and paste into the other.

I see that this might be "by design" (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/kiosk-single-app#:~:text=Apps%20that%20run%20in%20kiosk%20mode%20cannot%20use%20copy%20and%20paste), but that is obviously not true because there are so many ways that it works. However, it is broken just enough of the time to be incredibly limiting and very frustrating; I'd like to turn it off.

If it can't be turned off, I'd like to enable side-by-side browser tabs so they can copy text by retyping it manually, but I can't find a way to allow that either.

If we can't find a way to do one of these, that means users will print a page so they can have it with them (like for a part that needs to be ordered), then type it in to the fillable PDF or OneNote, and then throw it away.

P.S. You have no tags related to "Assigned Access" or "Kiosk".

Answer 1

Hi @Chris Barth

I searched a lot but didn't find a way to disable copy/paste in Edge kiosk mode. The only related feature in kiosk mode is Read only address bar (policy). If you disable this policy KioskAddressBarEditingEnabled, it can prevent users from pasting/editing in the address bar.

As the document says Apps that run in kiosk mode cannot use copy and paste, but copy/paste is still usable in Edge kiosk mode user experience, I suggest that you can provide feedback to Edge team about this issue. You can press Alt+Shift+I in Edge to send feedback. Edge team will check the feedbacks and improve the product continuously. Thanks for your understanding.

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Regards,
Yu Zhou

Answer 2

I've submitted this issue as you've said some time ago. I came here to check on the progress of this issue. Is there any way that I can see how my reported issue is progressing? This inconsistent ability to copy/paste is causing confusion for our users. We really want to allow copy/paste and it doesn't seem that it can be that difficult to include a registry key to configure this, especially since it already works in some apps, so the feature is clearly already there.