How to Paste Without Formatting on Mac (5 Methods)

Copying something from a website and pasting it into your doc — and the paste shows up in Arial 11 on a yellow background with three live hyperlinks — is one of the most consistent small annoyances in macOS. You almost never want the source formatting. You want plain text.

There are five different ways to fix this on Mac in 2026. Some are one-shot keyboard shortcuts; some are permanent changes. Pick the one that fits how often you do it.

The short answer

• One-shot: ⌘ + Option + Shift + V pastes as plain text in most apps.
• Better one-shot: copy the text again into Notes first, then copy it back out — Notes strips formatting.
• Permanent default in one app: look in the app’s preferences for a “Paste as plain text” option.
• Permanent system-wide: remap the keyboard shortcut so ⌘V itself pastes plain text everywhere.
• The cleanest answer if you do this often: use a clipboard manager that has a “Paste as plain text” mode built in, like SnipTray.

Method 1: The built-in keyboard shortcut

In most Mac apps — Pages, Keynote, Mail, Notes, Slack, Notion, Linear, most browsers — paste as plain text is built in:

⌘ + Option + Shift + V

That is four keys. Awkward, but it works without any setup. The pasted text picks up the formatting of the destination instead of the source.

The catch: this shortcut is not universal. Some apps use ⌘ + Shift + V instead (Google Docs is the famous one). A few apps (looking at you, Microsoft Word) bury “Paste Special → Unformatted Text” in a menu instead of having a shortcut at all.

If you only need plain-text paste occasionally and you remember which app does which, this method is fine. If you find yourself doing it ten times a day, keep reading.

Method 2: Bounce through Apple Notes

A useful trick when the destination app does not have a plain-text paste shortcut: paste into Notes first, select, copy back out.

The reason this works: Notes silently normalizes pasted text. By the time you copy it back to the clipboard, the rich formatting is gone, replaced with Notes’ own default styles. The destination app receives plain text.

Slow, but it works in literally any app and requires zero setup. Useful as a fallback.

Method 3: Change the app’s default

Some apps let you make plain-text paste the default for ⌘V, with formatted paste behind a different shortcut. Common examples:

• Notion — Settings → Editor → “Paste as plain text” toggle.
• Slack — Preferences → Advanced → “Format messages with markup” includes plain-text paste options.
• Mail — there is no native option, but ⌘⇧V does paste as plain text and you can sometimes get away with always using it.
• VS Code, Cursor, JetBrains IDEs — text editors always paste as plain text by default. Not a problem.

If the apps where this annoys you the most are the ones with a built-in toggle, set the toggle and move on.

Method 4: Remap ⌘V system-wide

If you almost always want plain-text paste, you can swap the shortcuts globally so ⌘V pastes plain text and ⌘⇧V pastes formatted text.

The cleanest way is through System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts:

1. Click + to add a new shortcut.
2. Application: All Applications.
3. Menu Title: Paste and Match Style (exact text — this is the macOS-standard menu item that does plain-text paste).
4. Keyboard Shortcut: ⌘V.

This tells macOS “whenever the active app has a menu item literally named Paste and Match Style, fire it on ⌘V”. Apps that name their menu item differently (or have no such item) will fall through to the original ⌘V, which is fine.

The tradeoffs:

• Pro: plain-text paste is now your default, everywhere it exists.
• Con: if you genuinely need formatted paste, you have to remember the new shortcut. Some apps (Word, browser-based docs) ignore the override entirely.
• Con: new apps you install have the override too, sometimes unexpectedly.

For most writers and developers this is the right tradeoff. For designers who paste formatted text into Sketch and Figma constantly, it is not.

Method 5: Use a clipboard manager (the cleanest answer)

If you have a clipboard manager installed, plain-text paste becomes a property of the paste, not a property of the app. The cleanest experience.

SnipTray has two relevant features here:

• Plain-text paste toggle. Hold ⇧ while pasting from the SnipTray tray to paste without formatting, in any app, regardless of what the destination supports. No ⌘⇧⌥V gymnastics.
• Paste-as setting per pinboard. Mark an entire pinboard as “always paste plain” — useful for canned responses, code snippets, or anything you want stripped of source formatting permanently.

This works because the clipboard manager takes responsibility for how the item is pasted, not just what is pasted. The destination app sees clean text and never knows the source was a rich-text PDF.

If you do not have a clipboard manager yet, the broader case for installing one is in How to access clipboard history on Mac, and the head-to-head comparison is Best clipboard manager for Mac in 2026.

Which method should you use?

A short decision tree:

• I only paste from rich text occasionally. Built-in ⌘⇧⌥V is fine.
• The app I care about has a toggle. Use the toggle.
• I want plain-text paste to be the global default and accept the small tradeoffs. Remap ⌘V to Paste and Match Style.
• I want plain-text paste available everywhere with no gotchas, plus a real clipboard history. Install a clipboard manager like SnipTray.

Frequently asked questions

Why does pasting bring formatting at all?

The macOS clipboard supports multiple representations of the same content — a website you copied includes plain text, rich text, HTML, and sometimes an image, all in one clipboard item. The destination app picks the richest representation it can handle. Plain-text paste tells the app to ignore everything except the plain string.

What is the difference between “Paste” and “Paste and Match Style”?

“Paste” inserts the clipboard contents with whatever formatting they originally had. “Paste and Match Style” inserts only the text, formatted to match the destination. The latter is what you want 90% of the time.

Does ⌘⇧V work everywhere?

No. It is a convention that most modern Mac apps follow, but some apps use a different shortcut (Google Docs uses ⌘⇧V for the same thing but in a web context), and some do not support plain-text paste at all without a workaround. See methods 2 and 5 for the universal fallbacks.

Can I paste plain text on iPhone and iPad?

Less directly. iOS does not have a built-in plain-text paste shortcut. Workarounds include pasting into Notes first (as on Mac), or using an Apple Shortcut that takes the clipboard, strips formatting, and copies the cleaned version back. Apps with explicit toggles (Notion, Bear, iA Writer) are your best bet.

Is “paste without formatting” the same as “paste without hyperlinks”?

Mostly, but not always. Plain-text paste removes hyperlinks because hyperlinks are part of the formatting layer. If you want the text and the link as separate things, you usually want formatted paste with manual cleanup, or a clipboard manager that lets you preview and edit the clip before pasting (see SnipTray’s rich previews).

What if I want to strip formatting from text already in a doc?

Most apps offer Format → Make Plain Text (or similar) for already-pasted text. In a pinch, select → cut → paste-and-match-style works too. Or use a clipboard manager that supports re-pasting any previously-copied item as plain text — see Best clipboard manager for Mac.

The bottom line

The fastest one-shot way to paste without formatting on Mac is ⌘⇧⌥V. The fastest permanent fix is remapping ⌘V to Paste and Match Style in System Settings. The cleanest experience is using a clipboard manager that handles plain-text paste as a first-class option.

Try SnipTray free — hold ⇧ while pasting any clip and it lands as plain text, no app-by-app gymnastics required. While you are there, see Snippet expansion vs clipboard history for how to make canned-response pastes consistent across your team.