How to Paste Without Formatting on Mac

With Pure Paste

Pure Paste clears the formatting (fonts, colors, bold, links, and tables) when you copy text, so you paste plain text with the normal Command+V in every app.

Open Pure Paste. Its icon is in the menu bar, and “Automatically clear formatting” is on.
Copy text with Command+C, like from a web page or an email.
Paste it with Command+V. The text has no formatting.

Pure Paste does not change files, images, or passwords that you copy from a password manager.

Tips

To keep the formatting one time, press and release Option, and then press Command+C.
To keep the formatting in some apps, like Keynote, add them in the “Exclude” settings.
To clear the formatting only when you want, turn off “Automatically clear formatting”, and set a keyboard shortcut for “Clear formatting and paste” in the “Shortcuts” settings.
Right-click the menu bar icon to turn the automatic mode on or off.

Pure Paste can also keep the links, remove tracking parameters from URLs, change typographic quotes to straight quotes, and remove invisible characters. Turn these on in the “Extras” settings.

Text pasted into a document, with and without its formatting

Get Pure Paste

Paste as plain text by default

$4, one-time purchase

Platform: macOS
Requires: macOS 26 or later
Category: Utilities
Released: March 2022
Privacy: No data collected
Family Sharing: Yes
Updated: September 2026
Version: 1.14.6
Size: 5 MB

More about Pure Paste

Without an app

Paste and Match Style

Most Mac apps, like Mail, Notes, Pages, and Safari, have “Paste and Match Style” in the Edit menu, with the shortcut Option+Shift+Command+V. Some apps use another name or shortcut:

Google Docs: Press Shift+Command+V, or choose “Edit › Paste without formatting”.
Microsoft Word: Choose “Edit › Paste and Match Formatting”. It keeps bold and italic on parts of the text.

Some apps do not have the command at all, and the shortcut is hard to remember.

Make `Command+V` paste without formatting

You can give “Paste and Match Style” the Command+V shortcut in all apps:

Open “System Settings › Keyboard”, and click “Keyboard Shortcuts…”.
Choose “App Shortcuts”, and click the add button.
Keep “All Applications”, and type Paste and Match Style in “Menu title”. Type it exactly like in the Edit menu.
Click “Keyboard shortcut”, press Command+V, and click “Done”.

This works only in the apps that have a command with exactly this name, so it does not work in Word, which uses another name. To paste with the formatting, choose “Edit › Paste”. Why Pure Paste does more.