[BUG] Image paste from clipboard not supported on Windows

Found 2 possible duplicate issues:

1. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/32791
2. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/63071

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It's ridiculous that such a basic function is still a problem, I won't close it as duplicate because you guys don't even read the issues apparently based on the backlog.

It feels like you're silly, it's clearly Alt+V, yet you insist on using Ctrl+V

It feels like you're silly, it's clearly Alt+V, yet you insist on using Ctrl+V

It's not "clearly" when using Windows basic commands, thanks for the heads-up, but a more respectable response would've been enough. Have a good day.

I was able to root-cause this on my machine (Windows 11, Claude Code 2.1.204, PowerShell 7.6.3 as primary shell alongside Windows PowerShell 5.1).

Diagnosis:

• Confirmed the OS clipboard reliably contains valid image data immediately after a Win+Shift+S snip, verified directly via .NET: [System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard]::GetDataObject().GetFormats() → Bitmap, System.Drawing.Bitmap, PNG, ..., ContainsImage() = True, correct image dimensions. So the OS-level clipboard is never the problem.
• Get-Clipboard -Format Image succeeds in Windows PowerShell 5.1 (powershell.exe, module Microsoft.PowerShell.Management v3.1.0.0).
• The identical command fails in PowerShell 7.6.3 (pwsh.exe, module Microsoft.PowerShell.Management v7.0.0.0) with:

A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'Format'.
PowerShell 7's cross-platform Get-Clipboard cmdlet only exposes -Raw/-Delimiter (text only) — it has no image-retrieval capability at all, unlike the Windows-only 5.1 version.

I can reliably reproduce: image paste works when Windows PowerShell 5.1 is the effective/primary shell, and fails silently when PowerShell 7 (pwsh) is primary — which matches the "Terminal/Shell: PowerShell" reports in this thread, since that's ambiguous between the two editions.

Hypothesis: Claude Code's Windows clipboard-image retrieval shells out to Get-Clipboard -Format Image (or similar) via whatever PowerShell it treats as primary. On pwsh 7 that call errors, and the failure is swallowed instead of surfaced or falling back.

Suggested fix: Use the .NET clipboard API directly (System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard / System.Windows.Clipboard) instead of the Get-Clipboard cmdlet — I verified this approach works correctly under pwsh 7 as well, so it should be version-independent. At minimum, surface an error instead of failing silently so it's less confusing.

(Note: one reporter above said this "never worked," but in my case it worked fine on a previous machine that defaulted to Windows PowerShell 5.1 — so this does look like an edition-dependent regression rather than something that never worked at all.)

Happy to provide more diagnostic output if useful.