Better Paste

Read in your language: English • العربية • Deutsch • Español • فارسی • Français • Bahasa Indonesia • Italiano • Nederlands • Polski • Português • Português (Brasil) • Русский • ไทย • Türkçe • Українська • Tiếng Việt • 日本語 • 한국어 • 中文简体 • 中文繁體

Stop fixing formatting after every paste! Better Paste finally lets you copy images from Safari to Obsidian, it strips tracking parameters from URLs, fetches page titles, and cleans up AI-generated text. Your own regex snippets run on every paste too. Just paste, and the plugin handles the rest.

If you love using Better Paste, please consider ☕️ Buying me a coffee or Sponsor on GitHub ❤️.

1 Installation

1. Install Obsidian from obsidian.md
2. Enable community plugins under Settings, Community plugins
3. Install Better Paste: click Browse, search for "Better Paste", then Install

2 What it does

Nine examples. Some run on every paste, others are commands you run when you need them.

2.1 Custom snippets

Write your own find and replace rules with regex and they run on every paste. This one removes Perplexity's citation markers:

The fix shipped last week[1][2] and rollout begins today[3].

becomes

The fix shipped last week and rollout begins today.

Ready-made snippets to import are on the wiki: convert ChatGPT math, remove bold from headings, collapse runs of blank lines, and more. How a rule is written is in section 3.5.

2.2 Images from Safari

Copy an image in Safari, paste it into Obsidian, and you get a web link instead of the image. Annoying! Better Paste saves the actual image into your vault:

![](https://images.example.com/2026/05/skyline-8f21a.jpg?auto=format&w=2400)

becomes

![[skyline-8f21a.jpg]]

2.3 Tracking parameters

Links you copy from newsletters and social apps drag a lot of tracking junk along. Better Paste cleans it off:

https://www.theverge.com/2026/1/9/story?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR2x9

becomes

https://www.theverge.com/2026/1/9/story

2.4 Link titles

Paste a bare URL and it turns into a Markdown link with the real page title:

https://obsidian.md

becomes

[Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking](https://obsidian.md)

The URL is pasted right away and updates when the title arrives, so nothing blocks.

Reddit, YouTube, TikTok and Loom block ordinary page lookups, so their titles are fetched from each site's own embed service instead.

2.5 Nested lists

Copy a nested list, paste it deep inside another list, and the old indentation comes along, breaking the tree apart. Better Paste reindents the whole list to fit the item you paste on. This:

- [ ] Trip planning
    - [ ] Book hotel
    - [ ] Pack
        - [ ] Chargers

pasted onto the empty item in

- Projects
    - Summer
        -

becomes

- Projects
    - Summer
        - [ ] Trip planning
            - [ ] Book hotel
            - [ ] Pack
                - [ ] Chargers

It works with bullets, numbered lists and checkboxes, however deep the destination is, and whether the copy uses tabs or spaces. A paste that is not purely a list, or does not land on a list item, comes through exactly as before. Rich copies from web pages go through Obsidian's HTML conversion instead.

2.6 Terminal output

Terminals break long lines at the window edge. Escape codes are stripped on every paste, and when you select the pasted output and run Clean up terminal output, the lines are joined back together:

npm warn deprecated [email protected]: This module is not supported and leaks memory. Do
  not use it. Check out lru-cache instead.

becomes

npm warn deprecated [email protected]: This module is not supported and leaks memory. Do not use it. Check out lru-cache instead.

2.7 Text from PDFs

PDFs wrap paragraphs into short lines and break words with hyphens. Select the pasted text and run Clean up PDF text:

The findings suggest that long-term expo-
sure has a measurable effect on the out-
come in both groups.

becomes

The findings suggest that long-term exposure has a measurable effect on the outcome in both groups.

Ligatures like fi become real letters too, so search finds the words again.

The command opens a dialog with a preview, so you see the result before it lands. Two switches handle what no rule can guess: remove page numbers, or join everything into one paragraph. Your picks are remembered for the next time.

2.8 Cleanup of AI-generated text

Chatbot text comes with curly quotes, long dashes and invisible characters. The invisible ones are removed on every paste, and with Quotes and Dashes turned on the rest becomes plain text too:

“It works,” she said — finally.

becomes

"It works," she said - finally.

2.9 Commas and quotes

Prefer your commas outside the quotation marks? Select the text and run Move commas outside quotes:

She called it "finished," then left.

becomes

She called it "finished", then left.

Move commas inside quotes goes the other way.

3 Settings

Here are the settings you will actually look for.

3.1 Behavior

• Clean up every paste: the master switch. Turn it off to use only the commands, or to clean only notes marked with bp: true (see section 4).
• Note property (default bp): the per-note switch from section 4. Rename it if it collides with something in your vault, or leave it blank to turn it off.

3.2 Images

• Save web images into the vault: covers Safari's "Copy image", pictures inside copied web content, and pasted image URLs. Images land wherever your attachment settings point, named after the source file, so no more image.png.
• File names: add your own format, like {{name}}-YYYY-MM-DD. You can also use {{noteName}} for the note name, {{property:xyz}} for any frontmatter property, and {{counter}} or {{counter:2}} for a number that counts up. A screenshot has no source name, so it gets Pasted image plus a timestamp, the same name Obsidian gives it. With attachName: demo in a note and the format {{property:attachName}}-{{counter}}, pasted screenshots become demo-1.png, demo-2.png, demo-3.png. The format applies to every image Better Paste saves, screenshots included, whether or not web saving is on.
• Size and style: give every saved image a width, a class, or both, so a paste comes out as ![[photo.jpg#invert|400]]. Define your own comma-separated lists like 200, 400, 600 and invert, invertW, then apply one value everywhere or pick Ask on every paste to choose in a small dialog each time (Enter applies, and your last pick is preselected). Classes like #invert are defined by themes and CSS snippets, for example to invert an image in dark mode. The Image width property (default image-width) sets a per-note width, see section 4.

Alt text survives the download, and if a download fails the original link stays in your note. Images over 50 MB or slower than 30 seconds are left as links. A note with its own image-width property (see section 4) overrides the size setting.

3.3 Links

• Fetch titles for pasted links: on by default, see example 2.4 above.
• Clean pasted links: removes common trackers everywhere, plus known clutter from sites such as YouTube, Google and Amazon.
• Link removals: add parameter names you also want removed everywhere or on specific sites. A live tester shows the result before you paste:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&list=PLxAbC123&si=8f2a1c&utm_source=share&t=42
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHX1W1XY/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2ABCDE&keywords=usb+hub&qid=1735689600&sr=8-3
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=obsidian+plugins&client=safari&sca_esv=9f1&sourceid=chrome

becomes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&list=PLxAbC123&t=42
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHX1W1XY/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=usb+hub
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=obsidian+plugins

A removal looks like this:

fbclid
mine.example | source, ref

fbclid removes that parameter on every site. mine.example | source, ref removes source and ref on mine.example and its subdomains, while every other parameter stays. And google.* matches google.com and google.se alike. You can see every built-in removal, and updates to that file arrive with plugin releases. Suggest your removals opens betterpaste.md with your list filled in. Review it there, then open a draft in your email app. Cryptographically signed links stay unchanged. Shared files and gift articles keep their access parameters.

Start a line with ! to turn off the built-in removals for one site:

!youtube.com

3.4 Text processing

• Trim surrounding whitespace: removes blank lines and stray spaces around the paste. Blank lines in the middle stay.
• Invisible characters: removes zero-width spaces and turns non-breaking spaces into normal ones. Emoji, Persian and Arabic joiners, and CJK spacing are left alone.
• Quotes: turns curly quotes and apostrophes into straight ones, so “don’t” becomes "don't". Off by default, so your typography is kept until you opt in.
• Dashes: turns en and em dashes into hyphens. Also off by default. Quotes and dashes inside code, links and note names are left alone.

3.5 Custom processing

• Snippets: your own regex rules, run after the built-in rules on every paste. Each snippet has its own switch, and they run in list order, so drag to reorder.
• A rule is one JavaScript regex replacement per line, in the form s/find/replace/flags. Lines starting with # are comments:

# Remove Perplexity citations
s/\[\d+\]//g

• Try it: type sample text and watch every enabled snippet run on it, live. The snippet editor has the same preview for the snippet you are writing.
• Import snippets and Export snippets: move snippets between vaults through the clipboard. Ready-made ones are on the wiki; copy one there and paste it in.
• Open regex playground: opens regex101 set up the way the rules work, for building and testing a find pattern.

3.6 Structure

• Keep list nesting on paste: on by default, see example 2.5 above. Structure rules run after the text rules, because they read the note around the cursor and reshape the cleaned text to fit it.

4 Per-note control

Add bp: false to a note's frontmatter and Better Paste leaves that note alone. Perfect for logs and transcripts:

---
bp: false
---

It works the other way too: bp: true cleans a note even when Clean up every paste is off.

And image-width sets the width of images pasted into that note:

---
image-width: 400
---

Images come out as ![[picture.png|400]], Obsidian's own size syntax. 400x300 works too.

5 Commands

Nine commands, ready for your own hotkeys (Settings, Hotkeys). The ids are for URI schemes and plugins like Commander, prefixed better-paste:.

• Paste (paste): paste through the rules, even in a note that opted out.
• Paste without processing (paste-raw): paste exactly what is on the clipboard.
• Clean up selection (selection-clean): run the text rules on selected text.
• Clean up terminal output (selection-clean-terminal): rejoin wrapped lines, remove leading indentation and turn • bullets into Markdown lists in the selection. On demand, because only you know the text came from a terminal.
• Clean up PDF text (selection-clean-pdf): rejoin the short lines a PDF layout makes, repair words broken by hyphens and expand ligatures in the selection. A dialog previews the result and offers page number and paragraph options.
• Run snippet (selection-run-snippet): pick a snippet and apply it to the selection, even one that is switched off for pasting.
• Move commas inside quotes (selection-commas-inside) and Move commas outside quotes (selection-commas-outside): comma style next to closing quotes, applied to the selection.
• Toggle automatic cleanup (toggle-cleanup): flip the master switch.

6 Good to know

• Pasting into code blocks, inline code or frontmatter changes nothing, and fenced code inside a paste comes through untouched. One exception: paste an image address into an empty property in source mode, and the image is saved into your vault with the property set to "[[skyline-8f21a.jpg]]". Obsidian Bases can show that as a cover image, and a local copy works offline.
• Screenshots and other bitmap-only pastes are left to Obsidian, which already saves them fine.
• Rich content (HTML) is converted to Markdown by Obsidian first; Better Paste then cleans the links and downloads the images in the result.

7 Languages

Better Paste speaks 21 languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. It follows the language Obsidian is set to (switching takes effect after a restart).

8 Privacy

Better Paste runs locally and makes network requests in exactly three cases:

• downloading an image you pasted
• fetching the title of a link you pasted (turn off Fetch titles for pasted links to stop this)
• loading the artwork for the welcome and What's new dialogs from GitHub

No telemetry, no analytics, and nothing is ever uploaded. Settings live in .obsidian/plugins/better-paste/data.json and stay in your vault.

Every release is checked with TypeScript, ESLint with the official Obsidian ESLint plugin, Stylelint, Prettier, Vitest and a dead code check. Warnings fail the build.

9 About

I'm Johan Sanneblad. I have a PhD in Software Development and have worked with innovation development for companies like Apple, Electronic Arts, Google, Microsoft, Lego, SKF, Volvo Cars, Volvo Group and Yamaha. I also build Notebook Navigator, the most popular file explorer plugin for Obsidian.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn!

10 Questions or issues?

Open an issue on the GitHub repository. For paste bugs, the most useful thing you can include is what was on your clipboard: open https://dynalist.io/clipboard in the app you copied from, paste there, and include what it prints.

Pull requests are not accepted; contribute ideas as feature requests instead. See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

11 License

GNU General Public License v3.0. See LICENSE.