How To Paste Without Formatting On Mac

Tips
1

I keep copying text from websites and documents into Notes and email on my Mac, but the fonts, colors, and links always come with it and mess up my layouts. I’m looking for a simple way or shortcut to paste as plain text only, without any formatting, across common Mac apps. What’s the best method or settings to use so everything pastes as clean, unformatted text?

2

Use plain text paste a lot on mac. Here are the main options that work.

  1. Built in shortcut in some apps
    In Mail, Notes, TextEdit, Pages, Keynote, etc
    Edit menu → Paste and Match Style
    Default shortcut: Option + Shift + Command + V
    This pastes text and forces it to match the style of the place you paste into.
    Fonts, colors, links get stripped or normalized.

  2. System wide “Paste as plain text” shortcut
    Go to System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts.
    Click the plus button.
    Application: All Applications.
    Menu Title: Paste and Match Style
    Keyboard shortcut: pick something easy, like Command + Shift + V.
    Now Command + Shift + V will trigger Paste and Match Style in any app that has that menu item.
    If an app does not have that menu entry, the shortcut does nothing.

  3. Use a plain text middle step
    If an app ignores Paste and Match Style, do this.
    Paste into TextEdit set to plain text.
    TextEdit → Format → Make Plain Text.
    Then copy from there and paste into your target app.
    Or use a basic editor like BBEdit, Sublime, VS Code, etc as a “scrubber”.

  4. Notes specific trick
    In Notes, after you paste, you can do
    Format → Font → Remove Style
    That strips formatting from selected text.

  5. Turn off rich text in Notes
    Open Notes.
    Notes → Settings → uncheck “Use rich text instead of plain text” if you see it, or set new notes to plain text.
    New notes will not keep weird web formatting.

  6. Third party clipboard tools
    Apps like Paste, CopyClip, Alfred, Keyboard Maestro give more control.
    Example with Keyboard Maestro
    Create macro triggered by Command + Shift + V.
    Action 1: Copy.
    Action 2: Filter Clipboard → Remove Styles.
    Action 3: Paste.
    Then you get plain text paste in every app, even stubborn ones.

For quick use, start with Option + Shift + Command + V.
If you hit the wrong keys a few times, welcome to the club.

3

If you’re copying from the web into Mail / Notes a lot, @himmelsjager already hit most of the “official” tools. I’ll throw a few different angles that don’t just repeat the same shortcuts.

  1. Use Spotlight as a temporary text washer
    Weird trick but works surprisingly well:
  • Hit Command + Space to open Spotlight
  • Paste your messy text in the search field
  • Then select that text in Spotlight, copy it again, and paste where you actually want it
    Spotlight strips basically all rich formatting, so what you re‑copy from there is plain text.
  1. Abuse Safari’s “Reader” mode before copying
    If you’re grabbing stuff from articles:
  • Open the page in Safari
  • Turn on Reader (icon in the address bar or Shift + Command + R)
  • Copy text from Reader view
    That text usually comes out much cleaner, with fewer crazy fonts and odd styles. Not 100% plain, but way less garbage.
  1. Use a different paste shortcut in specific apps
    I actually don’t love binding “Paste and Match Style” to Command + Shift + V globally like @himmelsjager suggested, because a bunch of apps (Chrome, Slack, some IDEs) already use Command + Shift + V for their own stuff.
    What I do instead:
  • In System Settings → Keyboard → App Shortcuts
  • Set a shortcut like Control + Option + V
  • Scope it to “All Applications” or just the precise apps that annoy you
    Less conflict, still easy to hit.
  1. Plain text workflow with a launcher app
    If you use Alfred or Raycast:
  • Both have clipboard history
  • You can add a workflow/action that pastes as plain text
    In Alfred for example, there is an option “Paste as plain text” in the clipboard prefs. Then you assign a hotkey like Option + V that always pastes the last item with formatting stripped, regardless of the app.
  1. Keep one permanent plain‑text scratchpad open
    Super low tech but really fast in practice:
  • Open a plain text file in something like BBEdit, VS Code, or TextEdit set to plain text
  • Park it on a separate desktop/Space
  • Any time you need to clean something: paste there, select all, copy, then paste where you actually want it
    If you enable “focus follows last app” habits, this becomes second nature and is weirdly fast.
  1. Strip links but keep basic formatting (Mail / Notes)
    Sometimes you don’t want totally naked text, you just don’t want 18 spammy hyperlinks:
  • In Mail: Format → Remove Links from the selection
  • In Notes: Right‑click a link → Remove Link
    So you can paste normally, then just kill the links and keep bold/italics if that matters.
  1. For terminal geeks: use pbpaste and pbcopy
    If you’re ok with Terminal:
  • Copy your text
  • Run:
    pbpaste | pbcopy
    That takes the clipboard contents, pipes them through the shell, then back to the clipboard, nuking rich text.
    You can save that as a tiny script and bind it to a hotkey with something like Keyboard Maestro or Raycast.

For a “set it and forget it” setup, I’d honestly combine:

  • A custom shortcut like Control + Option + V mapped to “Paste and Match Style”
  • Spotlight trick or a plain‑text scratchpad as backup for the stubborn apps that refuse to play nice

After a week your fingers do it automatically and you stop fighting weird fonts and neon‑blue hyperlinks everywhere.