I built a clipboard tool to strip/keep specific formatting like Italics
Hello HN, I’m Joseph, a solo developer. I built CustomPaste because I was frustrated by the binary choice standard clipboard tools give us: either keep all the messy formatting (background colors, huge fonts) or strip everything down to plain text. We all know Ctrl+Shift+V (paste as plain text), but that is often too destructive, it kills hyperlinks, bolding, and lists when I usually just want to normalize the font family (e.g., force Arial 11pt) or remove background colors. I wanted a tool that let me "strip exactly what I want, and keep exactly what I want." The Solution: Instead of a…
I built a clipboard tool to strip/keep specific formatting like Italics launched on January 2, 2026 with 38 votes, #594 of 14,584 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
CustomPaste is a clipboard tool that lets users selectively strip or preserve specific text formatting when pasting. Rather than choosing between keeping all formatting or converting to plain text, it allows creation of reusable recipes that define exactly which formatting elements to remove or keep—such as normalizing fonts, removing background colors, or preserving hyperlinks and bold text. The tool intercepts clipboard content, processes it locally, and transforms it based on user-defined rules, offering granular control over formatting choices for writers, developers, and anyone frustrated with standard paste limitations.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Stop the 'paste and fix' cycle. Automatically clean, format, and transform your clipboard text as you paste. Finally, Ctrl+V does what you want it to.
CustomPaste is a powerful Windows utility that automatically cleans, formats, and transforms your clipboard text as you paste . Create reusable 'recipes' and let `Ctrl+V` finally do the work you want it to. We've all been there. You copy text from a website, a PDF, or an email, and what you get is a mess. Wrong fonts, awkward line breaks, and hidden formatting that breaks your workflow. You spend precious minutes on the mindless, repetitive task of cleaning it up. How many hours of your life have you lost to this? There has to be a better way. From simple text to complex data, CustomPaste gives you superpowers to make every paste perfect. Be a surgeon: keep essentials like bold and…from custompaste.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hello HN, I’m Joseph, a solo developer. I built CustomPaste because I was frustrated by the binary choice standard clipboard tools give us: either keep all the messy formatting (background colors, huge fonts) or strip everything down to plain text. We all know Ctrl+Shift+V (paste as plain text), but that is often too…
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