[HN Gopher] Paste without formatting on macOS
___________________________________________________________________
Paste without formatting on macOS
Author : elisaado
Score : 179 points
Date : 2023-11-04 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scottswezey.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scottswezey.com)
| ttfkam wrote:
| Yes! This should be the default with Cmd-Shift-V being the
| alternative that preserves style.
| AzzyHN wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I've never wanted to maintain formatting while pasting. This is
| probably one of the most annoying default behaviors I've ever
| encountered.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| That and "drag selected text to random location". Who selects
| and drags blocks of code?
| discard124 wrote:
| I do.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I just learned this was possible the other day and I've been
| using it all the time since
| freedomben wrote:
| 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
| kajic wrote:
| And yet lists of things often allow dragging of individual
| items to rearrange them. I wonder if thinking of paragraphs
| of text, and perhaps even sentences, in a similar way might
| make the dragging of text feature more appealing (I also
| dislike it).
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Yeah, if it was code blocks, I still wouldn't use it but
| it wouldn't seem ludicrous.
| callalex wrote:
| Many computer users have a hard time with invisible concepts.
| Copy and Cur put text away in some invisible buffer that some
| people don't get, so dragging text works better for them.
| rurp wrote:
| I would _love_ a way to disable drag and drop behavior
| globally. I absolutely never want to use it, but it 's easy
| to accidentally trigger it.
| positus wrote:
| I do this in nvim. After making a visual selection I hold
| alt/option/meta and use j+k to move it up and down as a
| block. It's been helpful a few times when reorganizing things
| as I write them.
| Angostura wrote:
| I do use it occasionally but quite often if I've put text
| into the wrong field of a form. On Mac I quite often make
| text clippings by dragging text to the desktop
| hn_acker wrote:
| When I'm using my browser, I select and drag text from the
| page to the tabs section of the browser window to open a new
| tab which queries my search engine using the text (unless the
| text was a URL, in which case the new tab goes to the URL). I
| could copy, open a new tab, paste, and press enter in some
| cases, but that opens a tab to the right of all other tabs,
| when sometimes I want my new search tab to be in a different
| position.
|
| However, I would appreciate a setting that would let me
| arbitrarily switch between dragging vs reselecting already
| selected text.
| lxgr wrote:
| Me, all the time, but mostly across applications and not
| within single documents.
|
| Sometimes because I want to keep what's in my clipboard
| already; other times because it's sensitive enough data that
| I don't necessarily trust all running applications with (the
| threat primarily being an application incidentally
| logging/persisting it as part of some "helpful" feature, not
| outright malware).
| crazygringo wrote:
| I mean, I always do _within the same app_. If I 've moving a
| section of a document in Word from one place to another, you
| can be sure I want to preserve everything.
|
| However, I agree with you a billion percent _between apps_. I
| 'm sure I've copied text from a webpage into a document 10,000
| times, and not a single time have I _ever_ wanted the font or
| size or color preserved.
|
| Just think it's an important distinction to preserve.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Also I can't be the only person who almost never copies in an
| editor, but cuts and pastes back into place (so I can
| visually verify the copy.) It would be very frustrating if
| ctrl or cmd +X, V didn't restore the document to its original
| state.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I've never heard of that. Why do you do that? What's to
| verify? When has a copy ever gone wrong? I feel like I'm
| missing something because I don't understand it at all.
| jerbear4328 wrote:
| I do that too, I'm not sure why, but I'd guess it has
| something to do with the fact that the clipboard is
| something you can't _see_ , you just have to mentally
| keep track of it. I would guess that is just my way of
| checking that the clipboard is working like I assumed it
| would, because the behavior of copying and pasting isn't
| always consistent between different text boxes. More than
| anything, it's just a habit.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _the fact that the clipboard is something you can 't
| see, you just have to mentally keep track of it_
|
| I will say, sometimes I do find myself wondering whether
| something was copied as plain text or as formatted text,
| or whether I pasted the previous thing before going to
| copy another.
|
| I really like what Apple has done with screenshots -- a
| thumbnail hovers in a pop-up window in the corner of the
| screen for a bit. Doing something similar with the
| clipboard might not be the worst idea -- after cut/copy,
| a thumbnail hovers in the corner until you paste, or
| until 15s have passed.
|
| The fact that "copy" results in zero visual confirmation
| whatsoever does seem to be a bit of a violation of
| standard UX guidelines. Heck, even a visual effect like a
| flash and quick zoom-fade-out of the copied content feels
| like it would be helpful.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Realistically despite decades of doing this, I'd get over
| it pretty quickly. I think I just like to see that I
| pressed the correct keys.
|
| I do think in the early days (for me, this is the 90s) I
| had failures that weren't fat-fingering, the keypress
| just not registering. Maybe the wrong window has had
| focus once or twice too in some weird scenarios.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _What 's to verify?_
|
| That your keypress registered. You held down the modifier
| and you think you hit "C", but did you actually? For
| unfathomable reasons, when you copy text, there's no
| visual or other confirmation that anything has happened.
|
| If it takes you a long time to navigate to where you want
| to paste (scroll a lot in an editor, juggle windows,
| etc.), it's a bummer to get there and learn that your
| clipboard doesn't have the text on. You have to make
| another round trip.
| lxgr wrote:
| Many editors these days support granular versioning. Isn't
| it pretty annoying to have lots of remove/add back steps in
| that version history?
| netsharc wrote:
| It seems like it'd be saner to have Copy, and Copy and
| Preserve Formatting. But I guess the Copy, Alt-Tab, Paste, ah
| what the fuck!, Undo, Paste without Formatting spares a few
| steps.
|
| To counter your first use case, if I'm copy-pasting the
| second word (say it's a complicated name) of a heading to
| reuse in a paragraph, I don't want that paragraph to be
| another heading. In another universe, the geniuses who coded
| the editor realized that "no one will ever want a word in the
| middle of the paragraph to be in a different font, in a
| different color and with a different background color because
| they copied it like that from a website with that
| formatting".
| zpeti wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Pasting with formatting seems to be the default in Windows /
| windows apps too last I used it.
| velcrovan wrote:
| Yeah this is not a Mac-only thing.
| brookst wrote:
| Yes, I keep Notepad open just to bounce copy/paste off of to
| strip formatting.
| 1000100_1000101 wrote:
| Yup, and whether paste without formatting is ctrl-shift-v,
| ctrl-alt-v, or not available varies app by app. It's
| infuriating.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| narag wrote:
| Tell me that it's possible to disable autocorrect, isn't it?
| elashri wrote:
| Yes you can. [1]
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/en-qa/guide/mac-
| help/mchlp2299/mac
| truculent wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| playingalong wrote:
| What I use is paste into my browser's URL bar and copy from
| there.
| cwales95 wrote:
| I'm not the only one!
| wombat-man wrote:
| This or a textedit window that is set to plaintext
| tpmx wrote:
| I've doing Menu | Edit | Paste and Match Style like I guess
| you're supposed to do?
| junaru wrote:
| 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.
| DrAwdeOccarim wrote:
| I turn that off when I first setup my browser.
| lxgr wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure it doesn't get logged anyway, at
| least locally.
| AaronNewcomer wrote:
| The combination of Ctrl+C - Ctrl+T - Ctrl+V - Ctrl+A - Ctrl+X -
| Ctrl+W is pretty much hardcoded into my brain.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| This is a tiny bit more hardcore because it also trims any
| whitespace from the beginning and end of the string, and it
| strips out all newline chars. It's very handy quite often,
| though.
| roamerz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| This is exactly how it works on macOS too. And that's
| actually the mechanism used by "paste and match style" AIUI.
| duxup wrote:
| It's that way in Windows and windows apps too.
| bilekas wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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-
| fin...
|
| You can create a shortcut (or applescript) that does the
| things you mention.
| Someone wrote:
| In 1984, easily transferring styled text between applications
| was a novelty.
|
| Apple also aimed for simplicity, and when copying between
| MacWrite and MacPaint (the only two applications everybody
| had), keeping formatting was the best option.
|
| Add a few decades of people getting used to that behavior, and
| changing it takes guts, and will upset quite a few users who
| know how to repair formatting after pasting, but won't easily
| learn about the new keyboard combination.
|
| I also am not sure stripping formatting by default is the best
| choice today. See for example
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38142074, who wants
| something in-between.
|
| Maybe, paste should keep only formatting of entire units being
| pasted? So, it would keep bold, italic, etc, but only keep line
| height, margins, etc. for entire paragraphs being pasted? I can
| see people getting highly confused about that, too, though,
| especially about the difference between selecting all
| characters in a paragraph and also selecting the paragraph
| boundaries.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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" -- <i>, <sub>, <sup>, <ol>, <ul>, <li>,
| and <s>.
| Champagn3Papi wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| https://tapbots.com/pastebot/
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Notational Velocity works exactly this way.
| Findecanor wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I agree completely--but I'll go further. From a UI standpoint,
| italics should be treated akin to capital/lowercase letters.
|
| Currently, on every computer I'm aware of, if I copy an all-
| caps paragraph and paste into the middle of an all-lowercase
| paragraph, the pasted text will still be capitalized.
| Similarly, if I click into an all-caps paragraph and start
| typing without caps-lock on, the new text will be lowercase.
|
| Italics should work the same way.
|
| Note: I am aware that capitals, unlike italics, are different
| characters in Unicode/ASCII. Put that aside for a moment, it's
| not relevant to UI behavior, users don't care.
| crazygringo wrote:
| In CSS, `text-transform: uppercase;` is able to separate case
| from styling. I've used it frequently in the past, since you
| often want to experiment with all-caps for short headings,
| captions, subtitles, etc. Whereas if you hard-code the all-
| caps in text, you can't go back.
|
| In Chrome, if you copy CSS-all-caps text to the clipboard, it
| is copied as uppercase.
|
| Intriguingly, in Firefox, it is copied as the original (mixed
| case) source HTML text.
|
| I do like the idea treating all-caps as a style, just like
| small caps. The problem, of course, is that it makes it kind
| of impossible to type within it, since there's no feedback as
| to when you're typing capital letters at the starts of
| sentences or not.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| To be clear, my assertion is that most user-facing text
| editors should have the _opposite_ of all-caps as a style!
| I think italics should be treated the way we treat
| capitalization.
|
| Pressing [?]I (or using the UI equivalent) should act like
| the italics version of caps lock.
| snoopen wrote:
| I much prefer the approach of applying emphasis, be it
| italics, bold, all-caps etc, on top of plain text. To me
| this is the most versatile approach and I think is better
| for accessibility.
|
| A sentence with italics or any other emphasis should read
| exactly the same without that emphasis. Where the same
| isn't true of capitalisation.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > A sentence with italics or any other emphasis should
| read exactly the same without that emphasis.
|
| But it _doesn 't_, that's the thing! The word you
| italicize can alter the meaning of a sentence. For
| instance:
|
| > "I didn't _steal_ Sally 's necklace!"
|
| > "I didn't steal _Sally 's_ necklace!"
|
| > "I didn't steal Sally's _necklace!_ "
| nightfly wrote:
| What makes italics so special it deserves that treatment and
| not everything else in rich-text (bold, underline,
| sub/superscript)?
| iudqnolq wrote:
| The fact that it is special? All of this is arbitrary, that
| doesn't make it wrong.
|
| Italics is the most important of those styling options for
| formal English writing (eg MLA style). Underlining was
| traditionally used a as substitute if italics were
| unavailable.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Subscripts and superscripts should probably work the same
| way as italics. They're just not as top of mind for me
| because I don't use them as often in my day-to-day life
| (and when I do, I often use the unicode characters).
|
| I could see an argument for treating bold and underline
| this way as well, but I think the case is less clear-cut.
| Boldness is more likely than italics to be used for visual
| styling as opposed to semantic meaning.
| bambax wrote:
| I wrote a browser extension some time ago that does something
| similar: Paste as Markdown [0].
|
| The user can copy any text from anywhere, and then with the
| help of the extension, paste the result (somewhere in the
| browser), in markdown, so emphasis and lists, etc. are
| preserved, while everything else is discarded.
|
| [0] https://markitdown.medusis.com/
| bentcorner wrote:
| I kind of want something like markdown or WP reveal codes,
| where you can copy paste formatted text, but be able to see the
| formatting so you can remove anything unnecessary.
|
| There's countless implementations of formatting toolbars for
| web based editors, most of them bad, I feel like if operating
| systems handled this for users we wouldn't be wasting cycles on
| this kind of problem.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Is this why it's so annoying to copy and paste in the terminal on
| Mac?
| Tagbert wrote:
| No, terminal doesn't use text styling.
|
| What problems are you seeing with terminal? Copy/Paste work
| fine for me.
| herunan wrote:
| Why do this when you can have both options?
|
| - Cmd-V: with styling
|
| - Cmd-Shift-V: without styling
| ajmarsh wrote:
| Except for all the apps where it's "command shift option V"
| which is like trying to deliver a Vulcan nerve pinch.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Because Cmd-V should be "without styling" since that's the non-
| landmine option that is almost always what you want.
| sails wrote:
| Not to mention the mess that is pasting between Notion, Slack and
| Gsuite. Especially between the first two.
| ajmarsh wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Because some applications like MS Word blatantly don't follow
| Apple design guidelines and it annoys me to no end.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Someone wrote:
| > This solution seems to only work in certain places. For
| example, it's not working in MS Word
|
| Firstly, the menu item is "Paste and Match Formatting" in Word,
| not "Paste and Match Style", so you'd have to tweak that
| separately.
|
| Word also has quite a few settings for copy/paste behavior that
| will affect what it does (https://support.microsoft.com/en-
| us/office/control-the-forma...).
|
| I think those vary by version. For example, Word for Mac 2019
| has "Merge formatting when pasting from PowerPoint" and "Adjust
| formatting when pasting from Excel" checkboxes. Don't ask me
| what the difference between "Merge" and "Adjust" is.
|
| > Also, why is it "shift command V" in some places and "shift
| option command V" in others?
|
| It's a relatively late addition to 'standard' commands. I guess
| the search for an unused combo that's reasonably logical led to
| different results in different applications.
|
| I guess Apple went for option-shift-command-V
| (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236) because it's fairly
| complex, and less likely to be already taken.
| allenu wrote:
| I encountered this recently. I tried what was suggested in the
| link and it didn't work when I pasted into my browser (pasting
| into Protonmail). The core "issue" is the copy action puts the
| formatted version into the pasteboard (as well as the plain
| version) and the app can choose to retain the formatting if it
| likes and not all apps even offer two menu items to give you
| the choice.
| mthoms wrote:
| You can add an entry for the each app if necessary. It's not
| ideal but it works.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| This is the rare case of Microsoft Word behavior leaking into
| macOS with predictably terrible results.
| layer8 wrote:
| No, see 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| i have always pasted into the url/searchbar of firefox and select
| all and copy out of that for the same effect.
| ghusto wrote:
| I have a present for you then: https://sindresorhus.com/pure-
| paste
| janandonly wrote:
| Where have you been all my life?
| ghusto wrote:
| I felt the same way when I found it :) His other stuff is
| worth checking out too
| kashunstva wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| How to copy paste image?
| s09dfhks wrote:
| Does anyone have a handy defaults write command to do this from
| the terminal
| ghusto wrote:
| No, but for me this is better :) https://sindresorhus.com/pure-
| paste
| ghusto wrote:
| I'll just leave this here:
|
| https://sindresorhus.com/pure-paste
| mkerrigan wrote:
| I have been using [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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I actually think it's quite brilliant? One of the best things
| still in macOS.
| Timothycquinn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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-...
| xwowsersx wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Option-Shift-Command-V does the same: Paste and Match Style
| whatever1 wrote:
| And then you go to the hospital to fix your broken fingers from
| this atrocious key combination
| flenserboy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Any way to change that to Shift Command V? For some reason the
| blog post solution doesn't work on Notion.
| dur-randir wrote:
| Remap with Karabiner (https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/).
| I personally mapped right_command + v to it, but it's capable
| of a straight out remap.
| aaron465 wrote:
| Oh my god yes! Who TF even invented paste with formatting?!
| cglong wrote:
| 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...
| Nezteb wrote:
| PowerToys is a mandatory install for me on all Windows
| machines. Highly recommend!
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Right, it's in Powertoys, and alternatively this works well:
| https://stevemiller.net/puretext/
| asylteltine wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. It's nice to see thorough docs and tests
| https://github.com/p0deje/Maccy
| Max-q wrote:
| Why don't you just use the already built-in shortcut
| shift+opt+cmd+v that paste as plain text?
| wingworks wrote:
| I do this quite often. But it's really not easy to do.
| hanslub42 wrote:
| On X11: xsel -o -b | xsel -i -b
| gnyman wrote:
| 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-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 wrote:
| Just use cmd-shift-v?
| marcomourao wrote:
| I've been using TextExpander for this behaviour for a long time.
| I remapped my "SS" (ISO-PT keyboard) key to paste as simple text.
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