`Paste` on a folder's icon doesn't work

[kuraga]

Description

Paste on a folder's icon doesn't work.

Reproduce

1. Open Jupyter Notebook.
2. Create a file, f.
3. Create a directory, d.
4. Open f's context menu.
5. Click Cut.
6. Open d's context menu.
7. Click Paste.
8. Expected: f is moved to d on the disk,
9. Actual: nothing happens.
10. Expected: f disappears in the UI, d has f inside.
11. Actual: nothing happens.
12. Reload the page.
13. Expected: there is no f.
14. Actual: there is f.

Expected behavior

f is moved to d on the disk, the UI reflects it.

Context

• Operating System and version: Calculate Linux (Gentoo-like).
• Browser and version: Chromium 149.0.7827.155.

• Jupyter Notebook version: 7.6.0.

Troubleshoot Output

which: no jupyter in (/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/opt/bin:/usr/lib/llvm/21/bin)
$PATH:
	/usr/local/sbin
	/usr/local/bin
	/usr/sbin
	/usr/bin
	/sbin
	/bin
	/opt/bin
	/usr/lib/llvm/21/bin
sys.path:

/home/sasha/jupyter_issue/bin

/usr/lib/python314.zip

/usr/lib/python3.14

/usr/lib/python3.14/lib-dynload

/home/sasha/jupyter_issue/lib/python3.14/site-packages
sys.executable:

/home/sasha/jupyter_issue/bin/python
sys.version:

3.14.6 (main, Jun 18 2026, 07:07:18) [GCC 15.2.1 20260214]
platform.platform():

Linux-6.18.33-calculate-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-i5-7200U_CPU@_2.50GHz-with-glibc2.43
pip list:

Package                   Version

------------------------- -----------

anyio                     4.14.1

argon2-cffi               25.1.0

argon2-cffi-bindings      25.1.0

arrow                     1.4.0

asttokens                 3.0.1

async-lru                 2.3.0

attrs                     26.1.0

babel                     2.18.0

beautifulsoup4            4.15.0

bleach                    6.4.0

certifi                   2026.6.17

cffi                      2.0.0

charset-normalizer        3.4.7

comm                      0.2.3

debugpy                   1.8.21

decorator                 5.3.1

defusedxml                0.7.1

executing                 2.2.1

fastjsonschema            2.21.2

fqdn                      1.5.1

h11                       0.16.0

httpcore                  1.0.9

httpx                     0.28.1

idna                      3.18

ipykernel                 7.3.0

ipython                   9.15.0

ipython_pygments_lexers   1.1.1

ipywidgets                8.1.8

isoduration               20.11.0

jedi                      0.20.0

Jinja2                    3.1.6

json5                     0.15.0

jsonpointer               3.1.1

jsonschema                4.26.0

jsonschema-specifications 2025.9.1

jupyter                   1.1.1

jupyter_builder           1.0.2

jupyter_client            8.9.1

jupyter-console           6.6.3

jupyter_core              5.9.1

jupyter-events            0.12.1

jupyter-lsp               2.3.1

jupyter_server            2.20.0

jupyter_server_terminals  0.5.4

jupyterlab                4.6.0

jupyterlab_pygments       0.3.0

jupyterlab_server         2.28.0

jupyterlab_widgets        3.0.16

lark                      1.3.1

MarkupSafe                3.0.3

matplotlib-inline         0.2.2

mistune                   3.3.2

nbclient                  0.11.0

nbconvert                 7.17.1

nbformat                  5.10.4

nest-asyncio2             1.7.2

notebook                  7.6.0

notebook_shim             0.2.4

packaging                 26.2

pandocfilters             1.5.1

parso                     0.8.7

pexpect                   4.9.0

pip                       26.1.2

platformdirs              4.10.0

prometheus_client         0.25.0

prompt_toolkit            3.0.52

psutil                    7.2.2

ptyprocess                0.7.0

pure_eval                 0.2.3

pycparser                 3.0

Pygments                  2.20.0

python-dateutil           2.9.0.post0

python-json-logger        4.1.0

PyYAML                    6.0.3

pyzmq                     27.1.0

referencing               0.37.0

requests                  2.34.2

rfc3339-validator         0.1.4

rfc3986-validator         0.1.1

rfc3987-syntax            1.1.0

rpds-py                   2026.5.1

Send2Trash                2.1.0

setuptools                82.0.1

six                       1.17.0

soupsieve                 2.8.4

stack-data                0.6.3

terminado                 0.18.1

tinycss2                  1.5.1

tornado                   6.5.7

traitlets                 5.15.1

typing_extensions         4.15.0

tzdata                    2026.2

uri-template              1.3.0

urllib3                   2.7.0

wcwidth                   0.8.1

webcolors                 25.10.0

webencodings              0.5.1

websocket-client          1.9.0

wheel                     0.47.0

widgetsnbextension        4.0.15

Command Line Output

[D 2026-06-28 16:08:47.549 ServerApp] Accepting token-authenticated request from 127.0.0.1
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:47.551 ServerApp] 200 GET /api/kernels?1782652127538 (d4118fbff3044f138ad1097d58a89599@127.0.0.1) 3.37ms
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:47.558 ServerApp] Accepting token-authenticated request from 127.0.0.1
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:47.560 TerminalsExtensionApp] 200 GET /api/terminals?1782652127540 (d4118fbff3044f138ad1097d58a89599@127.0.0.1) 6.06ms
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:47.561 ServerApp] Accepting token-authenticated request from 127.0.0.1
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:47.564 ServerApp] 200 GET /api/sessions?1782652127543 (d4118fbff3044f138ad1097d58a89599@127.0.0.1) 8.07ms
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:48.151 ServerApp] Accepting token-authenticated request from 127.0.0.1
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:48.197 ServerApp] 200 GET /api/contents?content=1&hash=0&1782652128141 (d4118fbff3044f138ad1097d58a89599@127.0.0.1) 46.94ms
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:57.572 ServerApp] Accepting token-authenticated request from 127.0.0.1
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:57.573 ServerApp] 200 GET /api/kernels?1782652137562 (d4118fbff3044f138ad1097d58a89599@127.0.0.1) 1.98ms
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:57.577 ServerApp] Accepting token-authenticated request from 127.0.0.1
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:57.578 TerminalsExtensionApp] 200 GET /api/terminals?1782652137573 (d4118fbff3044f138ad1097d58a89599@127.0.0.1) 1.16ms
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:57.583 ServerApp] Accepting token-authenticated request from 127.0.0.1
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:57.584 ServerApp] 200 GET /api/sessions?1782652137577 (d4118fbff3044f138ad1097d58a89599@127.0.0.1) 0.99ms
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:58.219 ServerApp] Accepting token-authenticated request from 127.0.0.1
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:58.255 ServerApp] 200 GET /api/contents?content=1&hash=0&1782652138210 (d4118fbff3044f138ad1097d58a89599@127.0.0.1) 36.92ms
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:59.181 ServerApp] Accepting token-authenticated request from 127.0.0.1
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:59.183 ServerApp] 200 PATCH /api/contents/file.txt?1782652139177 (d4118fbff3044f138ad1097d58a89599@127.0.0.1) 2.76ms
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:59.193 ServerApp] Accepting token-authenticated request from 127.0.0.1
[D 2026-06-28 16:08:59.207 ServerApp] 200 GET /api/contents?content=1&hash=0&1782652139190 (d4118fbff3044f138ad1097d58a89599@127.0.0.1) 14.17ms

Browser Output

[Robikuu]

OS: Windows 11
Browser: Zen (Firefox 152.0.3)
Jupyter Notebook Version: 7.6.0

This bug is happening on my setup as well. Once inside the actual directory, the paste button works perfectly. The bug only occurs when using the context menu interaction on the folder icon, exactly as described in the issue.

[AzisK]

I can also reproduce.

OS: MacOS Tahoe 26.5.1
Browser: Safari Version 26.5 (21624.2.5.11.4)
Jupyter Notebook Version: 7.7.0a0

When we paste on the directory's context menu, it actually pastes the file but it pastes inside the root, not the dir. I am not sure if this is not the desired functionality but it is not intuitive and I suppose that it would be much more intuitive if the file would be pasted inside the dir. Can someone agree?

[krassowski]

Yes this makes sense. If the same reproduces in JupyterLab file browser then the code change needs to be made over there. PRs welcome.

[andrii-i]

@kuraga @Robikuu @AzisK thank you for creating or commenting on this issue. If you would have an opportunity to test this in JupyterLab as @krassowski above suggests, please do and comment back here on the results, this would be highly appreciated.

Thank you.

[codewithdaniel1]

I was able to reproduce this in the JupyterLab file browser as well. I opened jupyterlab/jupyterlab#19282 with a fix that makes context-menu Paste use the folder that was right-clicked as the destination, while preserving the existing behavior for other Paste invocations.

I also added regression tests covering both the folder-target behavior and the existing default paste behavior.