Results of the October 2025 Community Asks Sprint: copy button for code blocks, and more

feature-requeststatus-completed

Please adjust the retrieval date in the attribution comment to be in YYYY-MM-DD format, which is the more universal ISO 8601 date format. Currently it appears to be in the format of whatever locale the copier is in. That's... OK, until someone copies something that was copied by someone in a different locale/date format.

(Credit to VLAZ for noticing this)

bugstatus-completed

The attribution comments include the wrong license; it assumes the current site's license instead of the license the post is currently under. For example, Can (a== 1 && a ==2 && a==3) ever evaluate to true? was last modified in 2018, when the license was CC BY SA 3.0. However when copying the code via the new copy button, it displays the wrong license (CC BY SA 4.0):

// Source - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48270127/can-a-1-a-2-a-3-ever->evaluate-to-true/48270314#48270314 // Posted by Kevin B // Retrieved 11/4/2025, License - CC-BY-SA 4.0 const a = { i: 1, toString: function () { return a.i++; } } if(a == 1 && a == 2 && a == 3) { console.log('Hello World!'); } 

(Credit to Kevin B for this)

50% bug 50% feature-request

Please remove the language name from the header of the code block, for it is often misleading and wrong.

This is not a duplicate of https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/414576/147640 where the problem was that the correct language name is known, but cannot be displayed.
This is for when the correct language is not explicitly recognized by the syntax highlighter as a separate thing.

Example: VBA, VB.NET and VBScript are all different languages.
The syntax highlighter only has the VB.NET syntax, which was fine for the specific purpose of syntax highlighting, because the syntax is close enough to be highlighted correctly most of the time.
But now that the name of the actually used language, vbnet, is displayed in the code block, all VBA code blocks on the site are incorrectly labeled vbnet:

This code block is actually VBA

Misusing the vba/vb.net/vbscript tags is a recurring source of confusion, when the OP uses one language and thinks they are using another. Having a code block explicitly labeled vbnet when it is not greatly exacerbates this problem.

I'm sure examples of the same can be found around others tags too.

bugstatus-completed

Currently the copy code button uses the current URL you are browsing to generate its link, leading to cases like this where the attribution points to a comment rather than the answer that is being copied from:

// Source - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79802090/why-is-1e9-commonly-used-for-initialization-explain-with-an-example?noredirect=1#comment140821354_79802090 // Posted by Vedanshu // Retrieved 11/4/2025, License - CC-BY-SA 4.0 let maxVal = -1e9; let arr = [-5, -2, -100, -50]; for (let num of arr) { if (num > maxVal) maxVal = num; } console.log(maxVal); // -2 

feature-request

It is excellent that the Copy button has been introduced on Stack Overflow; I have been hoping for this feature for over a decade. However, it would be preferable if it occupied less vertical space.

Currently on Stack Overflow:

By comparison, GitHub uses much less vertical space:

Same on Hugging Face:

The addition of vertical space is even more egregious on single-line code blocks, where the Copy button double the vertical space they occupy:

By comparison, GitHub:

I'd suggest doing something similar to GitHub.

bugstatus-completed

One bug in the (undocumented?) additional feature that guesses at the language used is that it is sometimes wrong (originally reported on Meta Stack Overflow):

New code block design guesses incorrectly at what the language is, even when explicitly stated

I just loaded a question and saw what I assume is a new feature in code blocks where the site tells us at a glance what it thinks the language is in said code block:

This question is tagged html and the actual code fences explicitly state the code is HTML as well:

This might just be specific to HTML/XML, since other questions tagged, e.g. java seem to 'guess' correctly. The question where I saw this is: Name attribute on details element

Can this please be fixed to not guess at the very least when the language is explicitly stated in the code fences, and preferably also not when a (single) language tag is used in the question?

(Or better yet, if you think you detect a language that is not tagged in the question, prompt the user to confirm whether that language is correct before allowing them to post the question, and if not, change the guess or auto-add the language tag. That would save on a fair amount of "you can't close this question as a duplicate with your gold badge because the question didn't have the correct language tag beforehand).

bugstatus-completed

Copying posts written by a now-deleted user (such as Can (a== 1 && a ==2 && a==3) ever evaluate to true?) results in the attribution comment being blank for "Posted By: ":

// Source - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48270127/can-a-1-a-2-a-3-ever-evaluate-to-true/48288599#48288599 // Posted by // Retrieved 11/4/2025, License - CC-BY-SA 4.0 var a = { r: /\d/g, valueOf: function(){ return this.r.exec(123)[0] } } if (a == 1 && a == 2 && a == 3) { console.log("!") } 

It should instead still show the deleted username (e.g. user555141 in this case).

(Screenshot of answer)

(Credit to VLAZ and Kevin B both for this one)

bug status-completed

There are now two copy buttons in Stack Snippets:

The original one (below the code blocks) still copies all the content to the answer field, but the top two just copy that specific code block (e.g. just the CSS or just the (mislabeled as XML) HTML, with attribution, but not in Stack Snippet format. This will likely lead to confusion for readers/answerers. To make matters worse, no information is shown via a tooltip on hover to help users along.

Can the original Stack Snippet "Copy" button be expanded to say "Copy to answer" or something similar? And/Or can the new Copy button for each code block be expanded to "Copy with attribution"

(link to answer shown in screenshot above: Prevent long <legend> from overflowing <fieldset>)

bugstatus-completed

Copy button should not move on scroll

Example question: Prevent long <legend> from overflowing <fieldset>

feature-requeststatus-review

It would be more visually appealing if the copy button and the language label were vertically aligned. Currently it looks a bit messy:

Example of a better alignment, from ChatGPT desktop program on Windows:

Or from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install:

As an alternative to the newly introduced copy button for code blocks on Stack Overflow, I've updated my userscript (see the StackApps post for more info) to offer a superior (imo), cross-site experience.

The advantages of having this script installed:

• Works on all Stack Exchange websites (not just Stack Overflow)

• Guaranteed plain-text attribution. The official SO feature often incorrectly guesses the programming language and comments out the attribution with the wrong syntax (see the relevant bug report), creating extra work. This script provides the attribution as plain text, letting you decide how to comment it out

• Gives the right attribution (i.e. link to the post, author's name, date of retrieval, and license info) for all posts (regular Q&A's, community wikis, posts by deleted users, etc.)

• The copy button only appears on hover (unlike SO's feature), saving screen space. It cleanly overrides (removes) the default Stack Overflow copy button

Click to install the updated version with a script manager. Note: I have only tested this with Tampermonkey on Firefox.

status-completed

Please add the “Copy Button for code blocks” to the Code Review site as well.

On Code Review people share code from a project they own or maintain for peer review. Potential answerers will often want to run the posted code themselves in order to review it. A copy button for code blocks would make that much easier.

Update (November 16, 2025): The results of a poll on Code Review Meta were generally in favor of the feature (Yes: +18/-1, No: +1/-2 after 11 days) and it has been turned on.

bug status-bydesign

Code blocks don't always have a copy button. I think the common denominator is the syntax guessing -- if it guesses the language (even wrongly), there is a copy button. If it doesn't guess the language, there's no copy button.

Example 1: (incorrectly) identified code blocks as Java:

Example 2: code block without language identification and without copy button:

If I understand correctly, your attribution comments do not follow your own requirements for attribution, because they do not include a link to the author's profile.

In certain situtions the language of a code block is guessed incorrectly, leading to the attribution comment to be in the wrong format. Pasting the code then leads to compile errors.

This is a common occurrence for questions where multiple languages are involved. For example, questions regarding the build files of a Kotlin app are usually tagged with kotlin, but the Gradle version catalog (one part of the build files) is in the TOML format. When the TOML code block is not explicitly marked as toml (which the vast majority of posts do not do), the language is incorrectly guessed as kotlin. The generated comment will use double slashes //: Correct for Kotlin, but wrong for TOML. # should be used there instead.

Long story short: If this code block wouldn't have been marked with toml, it would incorrectly be guessed to be Kotlin code, and copying it would result in this wrong comment:

// Source - https://stackoverflow.com/a/79810492 // Posted by tyg, modified by community. See post 'Timeline' for change history // Retrieved 2025-11-06, License - CC BY-SA 4.0 kotlin = "2.2.21" 

However, it needs to be this instead to not produce compile errors when pasted:

# Source - https://stackoverflow.com/a/79810492 # Posted by tyg, modified by community. See post 'Timeline' for change history # Retrieved 2025-11-06, License - CC BY-SA 4.0 kotlin = "2.2.21" 

One could argue that not marking a code block with the correct language is the root cause for the problem here. But the reality is that most users don't even know about the possibility to define the language for a code block, and not all that do employ it everywhere where it is needed. Unless the editor is changed to enforce this, I don't think this can be the solution.

Although the automatic language detection was always flawed, this change makes the fact much more visible. What is the intended solution for situations like these?

feature-request

Please change the appearance of the language indicator at the top of the block so that it looks different to a code comment. This could be by centre- or right-aligning it, or by using a distinctive style, e.g. border or underline.

As it stands, it doesn't look like a header, and it's easy to select it along with the code (the normal way, via PRIMARY selection - the button only copies to CLIPBOARD selection, which is too cumbersome for normal use).

Some posts are edited by multiple users collaboratively. All authors must be credited. How do you handle that in the attribution comments?

I like copying the code by selecting it, now I have to be careful to not select the language code. So it just made copy-pasting the code harder. The language code should never be copied to the clipboard, there's no use case where you'd want to copy a language code together with the source, it just ends up being a nuisance I later have to delete inside my editor.

bug

In dark mode, when the buttons have the focused state (Ex. via tab navigation), their background is the same colour as the text. Seems like this is a recurring issue (Text colour for hovered Ask Question button is similar to button background) with buttons and the site CSS.

feature-request

Please consider adding the "copy" button/feature to the "revisions" page for posts as well (and correctly select the license version based on the date of a given revision you copy from). For example, the answer post Can (a== 1 && a ==2 && a==3) ever evaluate to true? was last edited in 2022, so the post is currently under CC BY SA 4.0, however, the latest revision didn't change any of the code.

Someone might have a legitimate reason for wanting to use code from Stack Overflow but also avoid a newer version of the CC BY SA license. Allowing the user to scroll down to a revision from, say, 2018, when the code and post were still under v3.0 of the CC BY SA license, could be useful and would also be a great overture toward respecting users' licensing/content authorship rights and facilitating users' ability to find code posted here more useful to their needs.

Please could the "guessed" language tag be made something like user-select: none; so it is not possible to accidentally select it when trying to copy the snippet by the old drag-to-select-text, then copy method.

It seems vast swathes of JSON are guessed as Javascript which is a problem as JSON doesn't support comments so the old select and copy method will be needed.

bugstatus-completed

If one has the edit post privilege, clicking a copy button in the preview area will also save the post.

This code block is formatted as toml:

I have the following problems with it:

1. That the language is detected as ini may not be technically wrong, but it is quite confusing because this line of code belongs in the Gradle version catalog (which happens to be in the TOML format), not in some random ini file.

2. Furthermore, it is not obvious at first glance that the text "ini" describes the format of the code block and does not belong to the code itself. For very short code blocks - especially one-liners as this one - the effect is more pronounced.

3. Using the new Copy button adds the license as well, which is not always desired. Instead of removing the license after I pasted the code, I want to copy the code as usual by simply selecting it and pressing CTRL+C. This, however, also copies the "ini" text as well if I'm not carefully placing the mouse cursor. In effect this feels like a degradation to the previous user experience.

I do not even see the added value of having the detected language displayed at all. If you do not want to remove it entirely, I suggest to at least move the text out of the way, like right-aligning it near the Copy button, and making it non-selectable as not to interfere with manual text selection.

C++ code blocks are labelled cpp. This is confusing, because CPP is the name of the C preprocessor. They should be labelled with the name of the language.

You may be able to lean on Highlight.JS to get comment defintions for languages. Something along the lines of

hljs.listLanguages().reduce((res,lang)=>{ res[lang] = hljs.getLanguage(lang).contains?.filter(e=>e.scope==="comment"); return res;} ,{}); 

The stuff in there is defined in terms of regex, so for end, "$" would be your undefined.

See also https://highlightjs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/language-guide.html#comments.

feature-request

The SPDX format of comments might be appropriate here for the attribution comments. There's the benefit that it's standard, fairly well adopted, has a fair amount of integration with related ecosystem tooling, and indicates where the snippet ends.

// SPDX-SnippetBegin // SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-4.0 // SPDX-SnippetCopyrightText: 2025 starball <https://stackoverflow.com/u/11107541> // SPDX-SnippetAttributionText https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/12345/1 console.log("hello world!"); // SPDX-SnippetEnd 

See also:

• https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/v2.3/file-tags/#h3-snippet-tags-format
• https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/v2.3/snippet-information/#
• https://spdx.org/licenses/

For crediting multiple contributors, there's not analog to SPDX-FileContributor for snippets, but you could just do a comma-separated list in SPDX-SnippetCopyrightText.

The additional comment header first seems like a nice addition, but it's not very practical. Consider not doing it for smaller snippets. You are also not obligated to do it.

The button simply copies some text into the clipboard. Only when the user pastes from there into something that again is published attribution rules of the license can apply. The user would be responsible for the attribution. This is just a courtesy.

But is it also convenient? Most code I read shows links to SO sometimes but not that often. And it often wouldn't have to. There is fair use for example. As a result people would probably remove these lines again, wasting time and undoing the time saved by clicking the button.

On the webpage, you don't show these comments for any code snippet as well.

Therefore, for the sake of practicality, consider condensing the additional comment into a single line and/or leave it out for small code snippets (say less than 10 lines) completely.