[gwbas1c]

About a year ago I wrote a Mac application to strip formatting out of copy-pasted text. (Note: I was mostly interested in getting an application in the store as a learning exercise.)

In general, copying formatted text is a mess on Mac. (I haven't tried an equivalent Windows app, although I'm primarily a Windows developer.) The problem is that many of the data structures for formatted text don't preserve context. IE, it's impossible to know that something is just "italic," "bold," or "underline," because the formatting is details about how to render the fonts. IE, "italic" converts to kerning, "bold" and "underline" are really separate fonts.

In theory, I could try to infer formatting changes, and then convert to very basic HTML, but I only had about a month in between jobs to finish the app.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/copy-cleaner/id1521489777?mt=1...

[thejosh]

Isn’t that ctrl+shift+v? It is for Linux and I think windows too?

[ryandrake]

The simpler keystroke should do the more common operation. My guess is 90-99% of the time, users want to paste text and match the format to the existing doc or app. Therefore, cmd+v should strip formatting if done according to that rule.

[gwbas1c]

Yeah, but who knows that? Apparently the author of the article doesn't know that.

Anyway, my app lets you see what's in the clipboard and adjust how much you want it cleaned.

[cuddlybacon]

On Mac, the apps I happened to check use cmd+shift+alt+v.

I checked MS Teams, Outlook, Mail.app, and Safari.