We’ve all been there: you’re working in a restricted VDI environment, a hardened Hyper-V guest, or an ancient ESXi console, and you need to get a long command or configuration script into the VM. You hit CTRL + V, and… nothing.

Clipboard sharing is often disabled for security reasons, leaving you to manually type out complex strings which increases typos and frustration.

I’m sharing my solution which I call “Super Paste”: a lightweight PowerShell tool that acts as a virtual keyboard, typing your clipboard contents directly into any active window.

The Solution

The concept is simple:

  1. Read the current clipboard content.
  2. Sanitize special characters that might confuse the “typing” engine.
  3. Type the characters into the active window using SendKeys.

1. The PowerShell Script

Save the following script as SuperPaste.ps1.

# Give you a moment to click into the target window
Start-Sleep -Seconds 2

# Get the clipboard content
$clip = Get-Clipboard

# Escape characters that have special meaning to WScript.SendKeys.
$escapedKeys = foreach ($character in $clip.ToCharArray()) {
    switch ($character) {
        "`r" { continue }
        "`n" { "{ENTER}"; continue }
        "`t" { "{TAB}"; continue }
        "{"  { "{{}"; continue }
        "}"  { "{}}"; continue }
        default {
            if ("+^%~()[]".Contains($character)) {
                "{$character}"
            } else {
                [string]$character
            }
        }
    }
}

# Create the WScript Shell object
$wshell = New-Object -ComObject wscript.shell

# Type out each character
foreach ($key in $escapedKeys) {
    $wshell.SendKeys($key)
}

How it works:

  • Start-Sleep -Seconds 2: This critical pause gives you time to switch focus from your host machine to the target VM console window.
  • Get-Clipboard: Grabs whatever text you currently have copied.
  • The switch converts line breaks and tabs to SendKeys tokens and escapes characters such as ^, +, {, and }.
  • $wshell.SendKeys($key): Simulates a physical keystroke for each escaped token.

2. The Launcher (Batch File)

To make this easy to trigger, we’ll use a simple batch file wrapper. Save this as SuperPaste.bat in the same folder.

@echo off
Powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -NoProfile -File "C:\Path\SuperPaste.ps1"

Note: Be sure to update the path to match where you saved the PowerShell script.

3. The Hotkey

The final piece of the puzzle is binding this to a keyboard shortcut so you can trigger it on demand.

  1. Right-click your SuperPaste.bat file and select Create Shortcut.
  2. Move this shortcut to your Desktop (Windows sometimes requires this for hotkeys to work reliably).
  3. Right-click the shortcut and select Properties.
  4. Click in the Shortcut key field and press your desired combination (e.g., CTRL + ALT + V or CTRL + SHIFT + V).
  5. (Optional) Click Change Icon to give it a cool icon.
  6. Click OK.

How to Use It

  1. Copy your desired text on your host machine (CTRL + C).
  2. Press your hotkey (CTRL + SHIFT + V).
  3. Immediately click inside the VM console or remote window.
  4. Wait 2 seconds… and watch as your text is magically typed out for you!

This simple workaround bridges the gap between secure, isolated environments and your local productivity, saving you from the tedium of manual data entry.

Safety notes

This simulates keyboard input; it does not create a network connection or defeat an air gap. The destination receives the clipboard text as though it had been typed manually.

Verify that the intended window has focus before the delay expires. Avoid using this with passwords, tokens, private keys, or commands that execute immediately: focus can change, keyboard layouts can differ, and some consoles interpret special key sequences differently. Test with harmless text before relying on it.