Paste Formatter

May 13, 2026 · View on GitHub

Paste Formatter is a lightweight macOS menu bar app for pasting formatted clipboard content with the styling you actually want.

Use it when “Paste and Match Style” removes too much, or when normal Paste carries over fonts, colors, and spacing you do not want. Paste Formatter lets you choose what to preserve before pasting into the active app.

Paste Formatter

Features

  • Paste from the menu bar or with a configurable global keyboard shortcut
  • Preserve or remove fonts
  • Preserve or remove text colors
  • Preserve or remove links
  • Preserve list markers and indentation in plain-text fields
  • Preserve paragraph breaks in plain-text fields
  • Launch automatically at login

To paste directly into the active app, Paste Formatter uses macOS Accessibility permission.

Download

Get Paste Formatter or build it yourself from this repository.

Build

To build your own copy, check out this repository, ensure you have Xcode and its command-line tools installed, and run:

./scripts/build-app.sh --bundle-identifier <BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER>

This creates an unsigned app at dist/Paste Formatter.app using the provided bundle identifier. Optionally pass --signing-identity to create a signed version.

To sign the app bundle as well, pass the name of a code signing identity available in your local keychain:

./scripts/build-app.sh \
  --bundle-identifier <BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER> \
  --signing-identity "<SIGNING_IDENTITY>"

FAQ & Support

First, check the FAQ on Paste Formatter's website. If your question or issue is not listed, or you have a suggestion, open an issue.

Contribution

Contributions are welcome. Feel free to fork the repository and submit a pull request.

License

Paste Formatter is available under the MIT license. See LICENSE for more info.