10 ms·

Paste without formatting on macOS

213 points by elisaado 3y ago

herunan 3y ago
Why do this when you can have both options? - Cmd-V: with styling - Cmd-Shift-V: without styling
- baggy_trough 3y ago
  Because Cmd-V should be "without styling" since that's the non-landmine option that is almost always what you want.
- ajmarsh 3y ago
  Except for all the apps where it's "command shift option V" which is like trying to deliver a Vulcan nerve pinch.
backtoyoujim 3y ago
i have always pasted into the url/searchbar of firefox and select all and copy out of that for the same effect.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ghusto 3y ago
  I have a present for you then: https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste
  - janandonly 3y ago
    Where have you been all my life?
    - ghusto 3y ago
      I felt the same way when I found it :) His other stuff is worth checking out too
  - wintermutestwin 3y ago
    OMG! This guy also made Command X. Apple makes things so much harder because they think they are making it easier for grandma.
robbywashere_ 3y ago
The futility of apple features you can't control.
ttfkam 3y ago
Yes! This should be the default with Cmd-Shift-V being the alternative that preserves style.
- AzzyHN 3y ago
  I disagree, but only because to me, cmd/ctrl-shift-V is "unformatted paste". I wonder if there's a good reason why this is the default, or if it's a case of some engineer in the 80's simply choosing one over the other
  - ttfkam 3y ago
    When first introduced, ctrl-c was the TERM signal to exit a program. Microsoft didn't give one rats ass about POSIX conventions at the time—especially in a GUI—so "c" was an easy pneumonic for "copy". "V" just happened to be the character right next to it, so that was paste. (Also because "p" was for "print".) ctrl-v was pretty basic, because the all the apps were basic. Most text was basically unformatted (Notepad) or moving from one part of a document to another (Word). Then companies introduced the notion of grabbing metadata along with text, so that you didn't have to figure out what font, size, and color were being applied every time. Then copy/paste was applied to non-text like image parts, files in a directory, etc. You could copy graphs from Excel and put them in your PowerPoint slideshow. Then folks found out they didn't necessarily want all that metadata along with their content, so shift-ctrl-v was introduced. Somewhere along the way, patterns emerged for many folks (like myself) where matching the target formatting was the more common case. This is especially true among coders. It's too late to change the default for everyone, but this tweak allows for some of us to tailor the behavior more closely to our own personal workflows.
everdrive 3y ago
I've never wanted to maintain formatting while pasting. This is probably one of the most annoying default behaviors I've ever encountered.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  That and "drag selected text to random location". Who selects and drags blocks of code?
  - discard124 3y ago
    I do.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    Are you talking about how code pasted in is never indented the way it originally was? It somehow adopts the indentation of the above line? I despise that.
    - eyelidlessness 3y ago
      I don’t think they were talking about that. But since you mentioned it, if you (or anyone else bothered by this) use VSCode, you can often just undo (first time undoes auto-indent if it was performed, second undoes paste). Sure it’s annoying, but at least for me it’s become so automatic I hardly notice it anymore.
  - tomjakubowski 3y ago
    I just learned this was possible the other day and I've been using it all the time since
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Seriously, when that rolled out decades ago it was one of the dumbest things and still gets me. I always want to start a selection on the text. Dragging the text somewhere else never does what I want it to and I end up having to copy/paste anyway
zpeti 3y ago
Pasting with formatting is one of the rare UX things that Apple gets so damn wrong. Unbelievable how frustrating it is, almost on par with autocorrect correcting the same word twice after I typed it out twice. I mean for ducks - I mean ducks, no ducks sake…
- duxup 3y ago
  Pasting with formatting seems to be the default in Windows / windows apps too last I used it.
  - velcrovan 3y ago
    Yeah this is not a Mac-only thing.
  - brookst 3y ago
    Yes, I keep Notepad open just to bounce copy/paste off of to strip formatting.
  - 1000100_1000101 3y ago
    Yup, and whether paste without formatting is ctrl-shift-v, ctrl-alt-v, or not available varies app by app. It's infuriating.
  - Isthatablackgsd 3y ago
    That's why I uses Ditto Clipboard Manager in Windows. I have it set to use paste without formatting (paste in plain text) as default. I recalled Windows can do it by using Ctrl+Shift+V which paste without formatting. Just a extra key to make it happen.
- brookst 3y ago
  Also the nondeterministic and possibly causality-violating behavior of capitalization during typing, autocorrect, and backspacing. Once autocorrect decides a word is capitalized, the keyboard will always do exactly the wrong thing when you try to fix it. You’ll backspace to the first letter, and the shift key will highlight so you capitalize some non-capital word. Or, having been burned by this, you’ll tap shift to turn that off, but it guessed you would do that, so you’re still capitalizing. And if autocorrect changed a name to a common word, good luck capitalizing the name. There is a PhD, and possibly a new branch of physics, to be had here.
playingalong 3y ago
What I use is paste into my browser's URL bar and copy from there.
- cwales95 3y ago
  I’m not the only one!
- wombat-man 3y ago
  This or a textedit window that is set to plaintext
- tpmx 3y ago
  I've doing Menu | Edit | Paste and Match Style like I guess you're supposed to do?
- junaru 3y ago
  Please be aware that this submits it to your search engine, so if you cleaning up passwords, etc this way you are essentially leaking them.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - DrAwdeOccarim 3y ago
    I turn that off when I first setup my browser.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      I wouldn’t be so sure it doesn’t get logged anyway, at least locally.
- AaronNewcomer 3y ago
  The combination of Ctrl+C - Ctrl+T - Ctrl+V - Ctrl+A - Ctrl+X - Ctrl+W is pretty much hardcoded into my brain.
- 3y ago
truculent 3y ago
The only case where this is annoying is in applications like Keynote, where pasting individual elements without style is not what you want. Infuriating stuff either way.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  You can add a separate App Shortcut for Keynote, where ⌘V is set to Paste. App Shortcuts override global shortcuts. I love the Mac keyboard shortcut system. It's so brilliantly flexible.
roamerz 3y ago
It’s amazing to me how Apple got this basic setting so wrong. It would be interesting to see the decision process that was used and if it was decided correctly maybe overridden by an individual?
- layer8 3y ago
  I don’t know how it works on macOS, but on Windows copying to the clipboard can provide content in multiple formats (like multiple MIME types) at the same time, for example simultaneously as rich text and as plain text. The receiving application then decides which format it understands and selects for pasting. If both sides understand rich text, this results in rich text being transferred. (It basically works like HTTP content negotiation.) You have to artificially add a man-in-the-middle to force a different format.
  - eyelidlessness 3y ago
    This is exactly how it works on macOS too. And that’s actually the mechanism used by “paste and match style” AIUI.
- duxup 3y ago
  It’s that way in Windows and windows apps too.
- bilekas 3y ago
  I do find myself still annoyed with Apple's persistence towards doing things different, just be different. Why can't I just have a navigation bar in the finder window that I can manually add in. Why do I have to google a keyboard combination just so I can view hidden files and folders. So many little things but they can add up. And it's not a Microsoft v Apple thing. Unix distros dont have a special 'command' button just for them to confuse things.
  - mthoms 3y ago
    It's not obvious, but finder allows you to put scripts, apps and shortcuts in the toolbar. https://osxdaily.com/2023/05/25/how-to-add-apps-to-macos-finder-toolbar/ https://osxdaily.com/2023/05/25/how-to-add-apps-to-macos-fin... You can create a shortcut (or applescript) that does the things you mention.
crazygringo 3y ago
My whole life I've been wishing for something in between. If I'm transferring between applications, I never want 95% of formatting — I don't want font or size or color or line-height or paragraph spacing or whatever. But I do want italics, because that conveys actual meaning around emphasized words and titles. And I do want to preserve subscript/superscript in things like CO2 or "squared", because that's similarly meaningful. And I also want to maintain bulleted and numbered lists, which again have meaning. Strikethru as well. So I just really wish that the OS had a toggle switch so that "Paste and Match Style" would still preserve everything "textually meaningful" -- , , , <ol>, <ul>, <li>, and <s>.
- Champagn3Papi 3y ago
 I recently bought the Pastebot, it's one of those tools once you try it and make it fit in your workflow you never want to go back. It's something like 12$ one time purchase which is great and a huge productivity booster!
 - benhurmarcel 3y ago
 https://tapbots.com/pastebot/ https://tapbots.com/pastebot/
- mrtesthah 3y ago
 Notational Velocity works exactly this way.
- Findecanor 3y ago
 You could argue that font, size, colour, line-height and paragraph spacing should not be considered "formatting" of the text, but as properties that belong to the container that the text is in.
 - coldtea 3y ago
 Whether it belongs to text or the pdf reader or rich text editor or browser doesn't matter. I want to carry them over when I copy and paste the text (and sometimes to strip them). I don't want to copy and paste the container.
kmonsen 3y ago
Is this why it’s so annoying to copy and paste in the terminal on Mac?
- Tagbert 3y ago
  No, terminal doesn’t use text styling. What problems are you seeing with terminal? Copy/Paste work fine for me.
sails 3y ago
Not to mention the mess that is pasting between Notion, Slack and Gsuite. Especially between the first two.
ajmarsh 3y ago
This solution seems to only work in certain places. For example, it's not working in MS Word. Also, why is it "shift command V" in some places and "shift option command V" in others?
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  Because some applications like MS Word blatantly don't follow Apple design guidelines and it annoys me to no end.
  - Someone1234 3y ago
    MS Office doesn't even follow MS Office norms across MS Office applications. Ctrl-Shift-V only works in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It isn't in Outlook and OneNote. People seem to be under the impression that Ctrl-Shift-V is a Windows feature, when in reality it is part of three specific applications and then the wild-west everywhere else. My point being: I'm unsurprised MS gets the MacOS norms wrong when they cannot even get it right on Windows.
    - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
      The overall Windows ecosystem is so inconsistent that I have trouble faulting any individual application for not following "norms", because they can barely even be called norms. (Don't get me wrong, macOS is slowly getting there too, it gets worse every year.)
- jonpurdy 3y ago
  So I solved this issue using a brute force manner a few years ago using aText (but any text substitution software should work, including Keyboard Maestro). When I type the characters 'zv' it substitutes for the clipboard. This gets around any smartness with formatted text and apps trying to be clever. I also chose zv because the substring is unlikely to appear naturally when being typed anywhere. (I prefix most of my substitutions with jj but wanted as few characters for this as possible). I also use Keyboard Maestro to get around apps and websites that block pasting (like password validation fields). Macros: - type from clipboard: instead of pasting, it simulates each character as a keystroke - insert then type: same thing but shows a text input window - insert then type (50ms/200ms): same thing, but also simulates latency in case certain apps can't handle unthrottled keyboard input (found this when typing into remote terminals sometimes for whatever reason) Also check out Pasteboard Viewer.app to see what the MacOS pasteboard actually contains (it can contain text and formatted text and images and lets the app choose what to paste, which can be very confusing). Amazes me how many hacks like this are required just to use a computer the way I want.
baggy_trough 3y ago
This is the rare case of Microsoft Word behavior leaking into macOS with predictably terrible results.
- layer8 3y ago
  No, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38142158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38142158 for the bigger picture. And Microsoft Word actually provides menus both before and after pasting allowing to choose how the styling of the pasted content should be handled.
- Someone1234 3y ago
  MacWrite on the Macintosh in the mid-1980s supported copying [some] format information like bold/italics. Word did introduce more complex format information (RTF) in the early 1990s but both Microsoft and Apple advanced this area with arguably Apple themselves originating it.
- flenserboy 3y ago
  Still trying to understand why even the unformatted text option in Word often doesn't produce unformatted text — I've seen too many times where column & margin information carries along even when font styling does not, & there's no good way to get rid of it without starting an entirely new Word document.
kashunstva 3y ago
I set up a Keyboard Maestro macro to strip the rich text markup from the clipboard and paste. It's built around this one-liner: `pbpaste | textutil -convert txt -stdin -stdout -encoding 4 | pbcopy` which obviates the need to hook into the "Paste and Match Style" menu item which may or may not exist.
elashri 3y ago
It was a very long time since I trained my mind on automatically pasting what I copy into sublime text and then it from there so that I don't get formatting preserved. I do this for anything more than two words/ not numbers. I don't even know which was the offender (windows or mac).
zephrx1111 3y ago
How to copy paste image?
s09dfhks 3y ago
Does anyone have a handy defaults write command to do this from the terminal
- ghusto 3y ago
  No, but for me this is better :) https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste
ghusto 3y ago
I'll just leave this here: https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste
mkerrigan 3y ago
I have been using [Jumpcut](https://github.com/snark/jumpcut https://github.com/snark/jumpcut) for this purpose. I have it bound to ctrl cmd v, so it doesn't conflict with the normal cmd v
mrweasel 3y ago
Neat, but the whole interface for managing keyboard shortcuts is pretty terrible in macOS. Either they really don't want you to mess with it, or it's just really hard to design for.
- troupo 3y ago
  Don't give them any ideas. It's a leftover from a bygone era when people at Apple cared about people using their computers.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  I actually think it's quite brilliant? One of the best things still in macOS.
- krackers 3y ago
  Wait until you find out about the _other_ hidden mechanism to configure keyboard shortcuts that can send arbitrary objective-c selectors.
Timothycquinn 3y ago
I don’t recall paste w/ formatting ever working well. IMHO, the OS’s should allow for some global config for default for Ctrl-v, Ctrl-shift-v.
Brajeshwar 3y ago
I have a different opinion. I try to be familiar with the Defaults and preferably stay with Native Apps to get things done. Once you are comfortable with the Default, you layer your expertise and experience on top of it. So, when I set up or re-set up the OS and the app, I try to see if I can live with the Defaults as much as possible. However, I spend quality time learning the details, so I’m not just jumping to a different App that does it better. Example. I’ve been using Apple’s Default Mail App and have tried a lot of other Mail clients. Some are awesome; some are fantastic. I learned all the shortcuts and tricks to make it sing to any tune I wanted. My Apple Mail does not have toolbars or anything else except the message list and the message[1]. It’s a similar setup for many other default Apps. I did love Fantastical, SuperHuman, etc. I might even use them, but that would be to separate an entity (say, work) but not for the Default Me. I love the idea of using any computer/device/system easily instead of one perfectly. So, for the copy-paste without formatting. I suggest letting the Default be. I know the shortcuts sideways, and my muscle memory kicks in to do the correct one. I love Obsidian pasting it as Markdown when I copied HTML, but my fingers do the right job for pasting in the un-styled format in Apple Notes. 1. https://cdn.oinam.com/img/oinam/brajeshwar-apple-macos-mail-2019.png https://cdn.oinam.com/img/oinam/brajeshwar-apple-macos-mail-...
xwowsersx 3y ago
I believe cmd + shift - v also pastes without formatting and I've always used that. I didn't know you could change cmd - v to do that so I will be doing this.
Tagbert 3y ago
Both Mac OS and Windows started with a mostly single-app interaction model. Switching between applications was slow and clumsy so it wasn’t something that you did frequently. Within an app, copy and paste with styling makes sense as you are trying to reproduce chunks of text. Easy multi-tasking only came later after default were established.
nusuth31416 3y ago
I spend many happy hours copying, changing, and pasting text to Ms Word documents on Windows. Eventually, I am using the middle mouse button to paste without format, and ctrl-v to paste with format. (Using X-mouse button control) Power toys has a setting that says it pastes as text too, but if I ask it to use ctrl-v, it gives me an warning saying that there may be issues if I want to paste a picture.
simonCGN 3y ago
Option-Shift-Command-V does the same: Paste and Match Style
- whatever1 3y ago
  And then you go to the hospital to fix your broken fingers from this atrocious key combination
  - flenserboy 3y ago
    Funny how it feels entirely normal now that's burned into my muscle memory, so much so that I try to use it on Windows boxen, sometimes to weird effect.
- thatsnotmepls 3y ago
  Any way to change that to Shift Command V? For some reason the blog post solution doesn't work on Notion.
  - dur-randir 3y ago
    Remap with Karabiner (https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/ https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/). I personally mapped right_command + v to it, but it's capable of a straight out remap.
aaron465 3y ago
Oh my god yes! Who TF even invented paste with formatting?!
cglong 3y ago
I was missing this on Windows, then discovered that similar functionality can be added via PowerToys: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/paste-as-plain-text https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/paste-as...
- Nezteb 3y ago
  PowerToys is a mandatory install for me on all Windows machines. Highly recommend!
- benhurmarcel 3y ago
  Right, it’s in Powertoys, and alternatively this works well: https://stevemiller.net/puretext/ https://stevemiller.net/puretext/
asylteltine 3y ago
Never in the history of copy and paste has someone though man I wish I retained that 78pt blue highlight font when I pasted this line of text into my document
shinycode 3y ago
I’m using maccy.app on macOS which is awesome and does just that. This should be a default feature of macOS for productivity.
- avtar 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing. It’s nice to see thorough docs and tests https://github.com/p0deje/Maccy https://github.com/p0deje/Maccy
Max-q 3y ago
Why don't you just use the already built-in shortcut shift+opt+cmd+v that paste as plain text?
- wingworks 3y ago
  I do this quite often. But it's really not easy to do.
- eviks 3y ago
  Because that's an awful shortcut
- dr_petes 3y ago
  Is that even a shortcut? I would have a hard time remembering that, compared to cmd + v.
hanslub42 3y ago
On X11: xsel -o -b | xsel -i -b
gnyman 3y ago
PSA if you use Alfred (w. Powerpack) you can get a always working version of this, but not bound to Cmd+V. It's a bit annoying to set up though > If you go to the Workflows tab, click the [+] in the bottom left, under Templates > Clipboard > you'll find a "Paste as plain text from clipboard" workflow. Add your own hotkey, and you'll be able to do exactly what you need https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/10032-clipboard-hotkey-that-can-paste-plain-text/#comment-50358 https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/10032-clipboard-hotkey-tha... There is a multitude other tools recommended in this thread also. The one thing I would recommend for those who does not have any clipboard tool is don't just get something that does plaintext. Get something that does HISTORY and plaintext conversion. Clipboard History/Search is among my top 10 productivity enhancements hacks that anyone can do and benefit from, might even be the nr 1. Whoever championed it at Microsoft and managed to get it included by default in Windows 10 (Press Win+V) deserves a medal.
jbverschoor 3y ago
Just use cmd-shift-v?
marcomourao 3y ago
I've been using TextExpander for this behaviour for a long time. I remapped my "§" (ISO-PT keyboard) key to paste as simple text.
Sloppy 3y ago
The consensus seems to be: - Cmd-v should paste to match formatting everywhere. No one wants that formatting or if they do they are in a tiny minority that can be served with some new shortcut. - there are several more or less cheesy ways to fix this in more or less places So Apple, retire it with the silly touch bar, push really hard click, and the lightning connector. Maybe these devs would be happer making touch text editing more than awful.
- wintermutestwin 3y ago
  The “push really hard click” is one of the things that makes the apple track pad feel so great. It is a tactile feeling that is not easy to do by accident. The touchbar would have been cool if it was a rock solid implementation that never bugged out. And yeah, lighting can’t die fast enough.
davelondon 3y ago
This is great! I'd love the same for iOS.
tfang17 3y ago
On iMessage, this causes images to be pasted twice
thebigspacefuck 3y ago
I use shift+command+v, sometimes I want to paste with formatting
porridgeraisin 3y ago
On linux X11 this is done with "targets". So essentially your browser, or any app, exposes a few different varieties of the same content e.g text/html as well as text/plain. If the app you paste into, requests text/plain, then you will get it without formatting. In fact even file copying is done this way, it copies the list of filenames as type application/file-list or something of the sort.
AlchemistCamp 3y ago
Shift + Option + Command + V is the Mac shortcut for this.
eviks 3y ago
Or you could try Karabiner to paste without formatting with a more convenient double tap Cmd-v paste Cmd-v-v paste no format Maybe some day proper keybinding support will come to the OS default GUIs
wappieslurkz 3y ago
This, and I'd like links to be preserved.
smugma 3y ago
In iOS I hate that Messages pastes in links from Wikipedia. To get around this, I first paste into an app that doesn’t preserve the links, such as a Web panel or WhatsApp.
habi 3y ago
I really like https://github.com/mattDavo/Yippy https://github.com/mattDavo/Yippy for 'managing' my copy-pasting. It has an option to not paste as rich text.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gnagnone 3y ago
[dead]
girafffe_i 3y ago
Doesn't cmd + shift + v do this everywhere and across different OS? But while we're at, "smart quotes" should be nuked, or at least default to off.

213 points by elisaado 3y ago

herunan 3y ago

Why do this when you can have both options? - Cmd-V: with styling - Cmd-Shift-V: without styling

baggy_trough 3y ago
Because Cmd-V should be "without styling" since that's the non-landmine option that is almost always what you want.
ajmarsh 3y ago
Except for all the apps where it's "command shift option V" which is like trying to deliver a Vulcan nerve pinch.

backtoyoujim 3y ago

i have always pasted into the url/searchbar of firefox and select all and copy out of that for the same effect.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ghusto 3y ago
I have a present for you then: https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste
- janandonly 3y ago
  Where have you been all my life?
  - ghusto 3y ago
    I felt the same way when I found it :) His other stuff is worth checking out too
- wintermutestwin 3y ago
  OMG! This guy also made Command X. Apple makes things so much harder because they think they are making it easier for grandma.

robbywashere_ 3y ago

The futility of apple features you can't control.

ttfkam 3y ago

Yes! This should be the default with Cmd-Shift-V being the alternative that preserves style.

AzzyHN 3y ago
I disagree, but only because to me, cmd/ctrl-shift-V is "unformatted paste". I wonder if there's a good reason why this is the default, or if it's a case of some engineer in the 80's simply choosing one over the other
- ttfkam 3y ago
  When first introduced, ctrl-c was the TERM signal to exit a program. Microsoft didn't give one rats ass about POSIX conventions at the time—especially in a GUI—so "c" was an easy pneumonic for "copy". "V" just happened to be the character right next to it, so that was paste. (Also because "p" was for "print".) ctrl-v was pretty basic, because the all the apps were basic. Most text was basically unformatted (Notepad) or moving from one part of a document to another (Word). Then companies introduced the notion of grabbing metadata along with text, so that you didn't have to figure out what font, size, and color were being applied every time. Then copy/paste was applied to non-text like image parts, files in a directory, etc. You could copy graphs from Excel and put them in your PowerPoint slideshow. Then folks found out they didn't necessarily want all that metadata along with their content, so shift-ctrl-v was introduced. Somewhere along the way, patterns emerged for many folks (like myself) where matching the target formatting was the more common case. This is especially true among coders. It's too late to change the default for everyone, but this tweak allows for some of us to tailor the behavior more closely to our own personal workflows.

everdrive 3y ago

I've never wanted to maintain formatting while pasting. This is probably one of the most annoying default behaviors I've ever encountered.

Ensorceled 3y ago
That and "drag selected text to random location". Who selects and drags blocks of code?
- discard124 3y ago
  I do.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Are you talking about how code pasted in is never indented the way it originally was? It somehow adopts the indentation of the above line? I despise that.
  - eyelidlessness 3y ago
    I don’t think they were talking about that. But since you mentioned it, if you (or anyone else bothered by this) use VSCode, you can often just undo (first time undoes auto-indent if it was performed, second undoes paste). Sure it’s annoying, but at least for me it’s become so automatic I hardly notice it anymore.
- tomjakubowski 3y ago
  I just learned this was possible the other day and I've been using it all the time since
- freedomben 3y ago
  Seriously, when that rolled out decades ago it was one of the dumbest things and still gets me. I always want to start a selection on the text. Dragging the text somewhere else never does what I want it to and I end up having to copy/paste anyway

zpeti 3y ago

Pasting with formatting is one of the rare UX things that Apple gets so damn wrong. Unbelievable how frustrating it is, almost on par with autocorrect correcting the same word twice after I typed it out twice. I mean for ducks - I mean ducks, no ducks sake…

duxup 3y ago
Pasting with formatting seems to be the default in Windows / windows apps too last I used it.
- velcrovan 3y ago
  Yeah this is not a Mac-only thing.
- brookst 3y ago
  Yes, I keep Notepad open just to bounce copy/paste off of to strip formatting.
- 1000100_1000101 3y ago
  Yup, and whether paste without formatting is ctrl-shift-v, ctrl-alt-v, or not available varies app by app. It's infuriating.
- Isthatablackgsd 3y ago
  That's why I uses Ditto Clipboard Manager in Windows. I have it set to use paste without formatting (paste in plain text) as default. I recalled Windows can do it by using Ctrl+Shift+V which paste without formatting. Just a extra key to make it happen.
brookst 3y ago
Also the nondeterministic and possibly causality-violating behavior of capitalization during typing, autocorrect, and backspacing. Once autocorrect decides a word is capitalized, the keyboard will always do exactly the wrong thing when you try to fix it. You’ll backspace to the first letter, and the shift key will highlight so you capitalize some non-capital word. Or, having been burned by this, you’ll tap shift to turn that off, but it guessed you would do that, so you’re still capitalizing. And if autocorrect changed a name to a common word, good luck capitalizing the name. There is a PhD, and possibly a new branch of physics, to be had here.

playingalong 3y ago

What I use is paste into my browser's URL bar and copy from there.

cwales95 3y ago
I’m not the only one!
wombat-man 3y ago
This or a textedit window that is set to plaintext
tpmx 3y ago
I've doing Menu | Edit | Paste and Match Style like I guess you're supposed to do?
junaru 3y ago
Please be aware that this submits it to your search engine, so if you cleaning up passwords, etc this way you are essentially leaking them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- DrAwdeOccarim 3y ago
  I turn that off when I first setup my browser.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    I wouldn’t be so sure it doesn’t get logged anyway, at least locally.
AaronNewcomer 3y ago
The combination of Ctrl+C - Ctrl+T - Ctrl+V - Ctrl+A - Ctrl+X - Ctrl+W is pretty much hardcoded into my brain.
3y ago

truculent 3y ago

The only case where this is annoying is in applications like Keynote, where pasting individual elements without style is not what you want. Infuriating stuff either way.

Wowfunhappy 3y ago
You can add a separate App Shortcut for Keynote, where ⌘V is set to Paste. App Shortcuts override global shortcuts. I love the Mac keyboard shortcut system. It's so brilliantly flexible.

roamerz 3y ago

It’s amazing to me how Apple got this basic setting so wrong. It would be interesting to see the decision process that was used and if it was decided correctly maybe overridden by an individual?

layer8 3y ago
I don’t know how it works on macOS, but on Windows copying to the clipboard can provide content in multiple formats (like multiple MIME types) at the same time, for example simultaneously as rich text and as plain text. The receiving application then decides which format it understands and selects for pasting. If both sides understand rich text, this results in rich text being transferred. (It basically works like HTTP content negotiation.) You have to artificially add a man-in-the-middle to force a different format.
- eyelidlessness 3y ago
  This is exactly how it works on macOS too. And that’s actually the mechanism used by “paste and match style” AIUI.
duxup 3y ago
It’s that way in Windows and windows apps too.
bilekas 3y ago
I do find myself still annoyed with Apple's persistence towards doing things different, just be different. Why can't I just have a navigation bar in the finder window that I can manually add in. Why do I have to google a keyboard combination just so I can view hidden files and folders. So many little things but they can add up. And it's not a Microsoft v Apple thing. Unix distros dont have a special 'command' button just for them to confuse things.
- mthoms 3y ago
  It's not obvious, but finder allows you to put scripts, apps and shortcuts in the toolbar. https://osxdaily.com/2023/05/25/how-to-add-apps-to-macos-finder-toolbar/ https://osxdaily.com/2023/05/25/how-to-add-apps-to-macos-fin... You can create a shortcut (or applescript) that does the things you mention.

crazygringo 3y ago

My whole life I've been wishing for something in between. If I'm transferring between applications, I never want 95% of formatting — I don't want font or size or color or line-height or paragraph spacing or whatever. But I do want italics, because that conveys actual meaning around emphasized words and titles. And I do want to preserve subscript/superscript in things like CO2 or "squared", because that's similarly meaningful. And I also want to maintain bulleted and numbered lists, which again have meaning. Strikethru as well. So I just really wish that the OS had a toggle switch so that "Paste and Match Style" would still preserve everything "textually meaningful" -- , , , <ol>, <ul>, <li>, and <s>.

Champagn3Papi 3y ago
I recently bought the Pastebot, it's one of those tools once you try it and make it fit in your workflow you never want to go back. It's something like 12$ one time purchase which is great and a huge productivity booster!
- benhurmarcel 3y ago
  https://tapbots.com/pastebot/ https://tapbots.com/pastebot/
mrtesthah 3y ago
Notational Velocity works exactly this way.
Findecanor 3y ago
You could argue that font, size, colour, line-height and paragraph spacing should not be considered "formatting" of the text, but as properties that belong to the container that the text is in.
- coldtea 3y ago
  Whether it belongs to text or the pdf reader or rich text editor or browser doesn't matter. I want to carry them over when I copy and paste the text (and sometimes to strip them). I don't want to copy and paste the container.

kmonsen 3y ago

Is this why it’s so annoying to copy and paste in the terminal on Mac?

Tagbert 3y ago
No, terminal doesn’t use text styling. What problems are you seeing with terminal? Copy/Paste work fine for me.

sails 3y ago

Not to mention the mess that is pasting between Notion, Slack and Gsuite. Especially between the first two.

ajmarsh 3y ago

This solution seems to only work in certain places. For example, it's not working in MS Word. Also, why is it "shift command V" in some places and "shift option command V" in others?

Wowfunhappy 3y ago
Because some applications like MS Word blatantly don't follow Apple design guidelines and it annoys me to no end.
- Someone1234 3y ago
  MS Office doesn't even follow MS Office norms across MS Office applications. Ctrl-Shift-V only works in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It isn't in Outlook and OneNote. People seem to be under the impression that Ctrl-Shift-V is a Windows feature, when in reality it is part of three specific applications and then the wild-west everywhere else. My point being: I'm unsurprised MS gets the MacOS norms wrong when they cannot even get it right on Windows.
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    The overall Windows ecosystem is so inconsistent that I have trouble faulting any individual application for not following "norms", because they can barely even be called norms. (Don't get me wrong, macOS is slowly getting there too, it gets worse every year.)
jonpurdy 3y ago
So I solved this issue using a brute force manner a few years ago using aText (but any text substitution software should work, including Keyboard Maestro). When I type the characters 'zv' it substitutes for the clipboard. This gets around any smartness with formatted text and apps trying to be clever. I also chose zv because the substring is unlikely to appear naturally when being typed anywhere. (I prefix most of my substitutions with jj but wanted as few characters for this as possible). I also use Keyboard Maestro to get around apps and websites that block pasting (like password validation fields). Macros: - type from clipboard: instead of pasting, it simulates each character as a keystroke - insert then type: same thing but shows a text input window - insert then type (50ms/200ms): same thing, but also simulates latency in case certain apps can't handle unthrottled keyboard input (found this when typing into remote terminals sometimes for whatever reason) Also check out Pasteboard Viewer.app to see what the MacOS pasteboard actually contains (it can contain text and formatted text and images and lets the app choose what to paste, which can be very confusing). Amazes me how many hacks like this are required just to use a computer the way I want.

baggy_trough 3y ago

This is the rare case of Microsoft Word behavior leaking into macOS with predictably terrible results.

layer8 3y ago
No, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38142158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38142158 for the bigger picture. And Microsoft Word actually provides menus both before and after pasting allowing to choose how the styling of the pasted content should be handled.
Someone1234 3y ago
MacWrite on the Macintosh in the mid-1980s supported copying [some] format information like bold/italics. Word did introduce more complex format information (RTF) in the early 1990s but both Microsoft and Apple advanced this area with arguably Apple themselves originating it.
flenserboy 3y ago
Still trying to understand why even the unformatted text option in Word often doesn't produce unformatted text — I've seen too many times where column & margin information carries along even when font styling does not, & there's no good way to get rid of it without starting an entirely new Word document.

kashunstva 3y ago

I set up a Keyboard Maestro macro to strip the rich text markup from the clipboard and paste. It's built around this one-liner: `pbpaste | textutil -convert txt -stdin -stdout -encoding 4 | pbcopy` which obviates the need to hook into the "Paste and Match Style" menu item which may or may not exist.

elashri 3y ago

It was a very long time since I trained my mind on automatically pasting what I copy into sublime text and then it from there so that I don't get formatting preserved. I do this for anything more than two words/ not numbers. I don't even know which was the offender (windows or mac).

zephrx1111 3y ago

How to copy paste image?

s09dfhks 3y ago

Does anyone have a handy defaults write command to do this from the terminal

ghusto 3y ago
No, but for me this is better :) https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste

ghusto 3y ago

I'll just leave this here: https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste

mkerrigan 3y ago

I have been using [Jumpcut](https://github.com/snark/jumpcut https://github.com/snark/jumpcut) for this purpose. I have it bound to ctrl cmd v, so it doesn't conflict with the normal cmd v

mrweasel 3y ago

Neat, but the whole interface for managing keyboard shortcuts is pretty terrible in macOS. Either they really don't want you to mess with it, or it's just really hard to design for.

troupo 3y ago
Don't give them any ideas. It's a leftover from a bygone era when people at Apple cared about people using their computers.
Wowfunhappy 3y ago
I actually think it's quite brilliant? One of the best things still in macOS.
krackers 3y ago
Wait until you find out about the _other_ hidden mechanism to configure keyboard shortcuts that can send arbitrary objective-c selectors.

Timothycquinn 3y ago

I don’t recall paste w/ formatting ever working well. IMHO, the OS’s should allow for some global config for default for Ctrl-v, Ctrl-shift-v.

Brajeshwar 3y ago

I have a different opinion. I try to be familiar with the Defaults and preferably stay with Native Apps to get things done. Once you are comfortable with the Default, you layer your expertise and experience on top of it. So, when I set up or re-set up the OS and the app, I try to see if I can live with the Defaults as much as possible. However, I spend quality time learning the details, so I’m not just jumping to a different App that does it better. Example. I’ve been using Apple’s Default Mail App and have tried a lot of other Mail clients. Some are awesome; some are fantastic. I learned all the shortcuts and tricks to make it sing to any tune I wanted. My Apple Mail does not have toolbars or anything else except the message list and the message[1]. It’s a similar setup for many other default Apps. I did love Fantastical, SuperHuman, etc. I might even use them, but that would be to separate an entity (say, work) but not for the Default Me. I love the idea of using any computer/device/system easily instead of one perfectly. So, for the copy-paste without formatting. I suggest letting the Default be. I know the shortcuts sideways, and my muscle memory kicks in to do the correct one. I love Obsidian pasting it as Markdown when I copied HTML, but my fingers do the right job for pasting in the un-styled format in Apple Notes. 1. https://cdn.oinam.com/img/oinam/brajeshwar-apple-macos-mail-2019.png https://cdn.oinam.com/img/oinam/brajeshwar-apple-macos-mail-...

xwowsersx 3y ago

I believe cmd + shift - v also pastes without formatting and I've always used that. I didn't know you could change cmd - v to do that so I will be doing this.

Tagbert 3y ago

Both Mac OS and Windows started with a mostly single-app interaction model. Switching between applications was slow and clumsy so it wasn’t something that you did frequently. Within an app, copy and paste with styling makes sense as you are trying to reproduce chunks of text. Easy multi-tasking only came later after default were established.

nusuth31416 3y ago

I spend many happy hours copying, changing, and pasting text to Ms Word documents on Windows. Eventually, I am using the middle mouse button to paste without format, and ctrl-v to paste with format. (Using X-mouse button control) Power toys has a setting that says it pastes as text too, but if I ask it to use ctrl-v, it gives me an warning saying that there may be issues if I want to paste a picture.

simonCGN 3y ago

Option-Shift-Command-V does the same: Paste and Match Style

whatever1 3y ago
And then you go to the hospital to fix your broken fingers from this atrocious key combination
- flenserboy 3y ago
  Funny how it feels entirely normal now that's burned into my muscle memory, so much so that I try to use it on Windows boxen, sometimes to weird effect.
thatsnotmepls 3y ago
Any way to change that to Shift Command V? For some reason the blog post solution doesn't work on Notion.
- dur-randir 3y ago
  Remap with Karabiner (https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/ https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/). I personally mapped right_command + v to it, but it's capable of a straight out remap.

aaron465 3y ago

Oh my god yes! Who TF even invented paste with formatting?!

cglong 3y ago

I was missing this on Windows, then discovered that similar functionality can be added via PowerToys: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/paste-as-plain-text https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/paste-as...

Nezteb 3y ago
PowerToys is a mandatory install for me on all Windows machines. Highly recommend!
benhurmarcel 3y ago
Right, it’s in Powertoys, and alternatively this works well: https://stevemiller.net/puretext/ https://stevemiller.net/puretext/

asylteltine 3y ago

Never in the history of copy and paste has someone though man I wish I retained that 78pt blue highlight font when I pasted this line of text into my document

shinycode 3y ago

I’m using maccy.app on macOS which is awesome and does just that. This should be a default feature of macOS for productivity.

avtar 3y ago
Thanks for sharing. It’s nice to see thorough docs and tests https://github.com/p0deje/Maccy https://github.com/p0deje/Maccy

Max-q 3y ago

Why don't you just use the already built-in shortcut shift+opt+cmd+v that paste as plain text?

wingworks 3y ago
I do this quite often. But it's really not easy to do.
eviks 3y ago
Because that's an awful shortcut
dr_petes 3y ago
Is that even a shortcut? I would have a hard time remembering that, compared to cmd + v.

hanslub42 3y ago

On X11: xsel -o -b | xsel -i -b

gnyman 3y ago

PSA if you use Alfred (w. Powerpack) you can get a always working version of this, but not bound to Cmd+V. It's a bit annoying to set up though > If you go to the Workflows tab, click the [+] in the bottom left, under Templates > Clipboard > you'll find a "Paste as plain text from clipboard" workflow. Add your own hotkey, and you'll be able to do exactly what you need https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/10032-clipboard-hotkey-that-can-paste-plain-text/#comment-50358 https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/10032-clipboard-hotkey-tha... There is a multitude other tools recommended in this thread also. The one thing I would recommend for those who does not have any clipboard tool is don't just get something that does plaintext. Get something that does HISTORY and plaintext conversion. Clipboard History/Search is among my top 10 productivity enhancements hacks that anyone can do and benefit from, might even be the nr 1. Whoever championed it at Microsoft and managed to get it included by default in Windows 10 (Press Win+V) deserves a medal.

jbverschoor 3y ago

Just use cmd-shift-v?

marcomourao 3y ago

I've been using TextExpander for this behaviour for a long time. I remapped my "§" (ISO-PT keyboard) key to paste as simple text.

Sloppy 3y ago

The consensus seems to be: - Cmd-v should paste to match formatting everywhere. No one wants that formatting or if they do they are in a tiny minority that can be served with some new shortcut. - there are several more or less cheesy ways to fix this in more or less places So Apple, retire it with the silly touch bar, push really hard click, and the lightning connector. Maybe these devs would be happer making touch text editing more than awful.

wintermutestwin 3y ago
The “push really hard click” is one of the things that makes the apple track pad feel so great. It is a tactile feeling that is not easy to do by accident. The touchbar would have been cool if it was a rock solid implementation that never bugged out. And yeah, lighting can’t die fast enough.

davelondon 3y ago

This is great! I'd love the same for iOS.

tfang17 3y ago

On iMessage, this causes images to be pasted twice

thebigspacefuck 3y ago

I use shift+command+v, sometimes I want to paste with formatting

porridgeraisin 3y ago

On linux X11 this is done with "targets". So essentially your browser, or any app, exposes a few different varieties of the same content e.g text/html as well as text/plain. If the app you paste into, requests text/plain, then you will get it without formatting. In fact even file copying is done this way, it copies the list of filenames as type application/file-list or something of the sort.

AlchemistCamp 3y ago

Shift + Option + Command + V is the Mac shortcut for this.

eviks 3y ago

Or you could try Karabiner to paste without formatting with a more convenient double tap Cmd-v paste Cmd-v-v paste no format Maybe some day proper keybinding support will come to the OS default GUIs

wappieslurkz 3y ago

This, and I'd like links to be preserved.

smugma 3y ago

In iOS I hate that Messages pastes in links from Wikipedia. To get around this, I first paste into an app that doesn’t preserve the links, such as a Web panel or WhatsApp.

habi 3y ago

I really like https://github.com/mattDavo/Yippy https://github.com/mattDavo/Yippy for 'managing' my copy-pasting. It has an option to not paste as rich text.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gnagnone 3y ago

[dead]

girafffe_i 3y ago

Doesn't cmd + shift + v do this everywhere and across different OS? But while we're at, "smart quotes" should be nuked, or at least default to off.