Paste Without Formatting on Mac: Every Shortcut and Fix

Short answer: Press Option-Shift-Command-V (⌥⇧⌘V). Apple calls it Paste and Match Style, and it pastes the text in the font, size and colour of wherever your cursor is. It works in Notes, Mail, Pages, Safari, Chrome and most Mac apps. Google Docs also takes ⌘⇧V, and Word names it Paste and Match Formatting.

TL;DR

• The Mac shortcut: ⌥⇧⌘V, also in Edit › Paste and Match Style.
• Google Docs: ⌘⇧V, or Edit › Paste without formatting.
• Word: paste, then Paste Options › Keep Text Only, or Edit › Paste Special › Unformatted Text.
• Make it the default: remap ⌘V to “Paste and Match Style” under App Shortcuts.
• Terminal one-liner: pbpaste | pbcopy turns whatever is on the clipboard into plain text.

What is the shortcut to paste without formatting on Mac?

Apple’s Mac keyboard shortcuts page lists it as:

Option-Shift-Command-V: Paste and Match Style: Apply the style of the surrounding content

So it’s not strictly “no formatting.” The text gets the formatting of the place you paste it. In practice that’s what you want: no stray font, no grey web background, no 14-point heading in the middle of your email.

If a three-modifier shortcut feels awkward, the same command sits in the Edit menu of most apps as Paste and Match Style.

Why does my Mac paste formatting at all?

When you copy, the source app puts several versions of the same thing on the clipboard: rich text or HTML with fonts, colours and links, plus a plain-text version. The app you paste into picks the richest version it understands. ⌘V says “give me everything.” ⌥⇧⌘V says “give me the words and let me style them.”

That’s also why behaviour differs between apps. Each one decides how to handle the rich version.

How do I paste without formatting in each app?

App	Paste without formatting	Notes
Notes, Mail, Pages, TextEdit	⌥⇧⌘V or Edit › Paste and Match Style	Apple’s standard
Safari, Chrome	⌥⇧⌘V or Edit › Paste and Match Style	Works in most web text fields
Google Docs	⌘⇧V, or Edit › Paste without formatting	⌥⇧⌘V also works in most browsers
Microsoft Word	Paste Options › Keep Text Only, or Edit › Paste Special › Unformatted Text	Edit menu calls the shortcut Paste and Match Formatting
Slack	Edit › Paste and Match Style in the Mac app	Check the Edit menu in your version
Terminal, code editors	Plain text by default	Nothing to strip

Apple Notes, Mail and Pages

1. Copy the text.
2. Click where you want it.
3. Press ⌥⇧⌘V, or choose Edit › Paste and Match Style.

In Mail, you can also switch a whole message to plain text: Format › Make Plain Text. In TextEdit, the same command (Format › Make Plain Text) converts the entire document, which is handy when you want a scratch pad that never holds formatting.

Google Docs

Docs adds its own shortcut on top of the Mac one, listed in Google’s Docs keyboard shortcuts:

1. Copy the text.
2. In the document, press ⌘⇧V, or choose Edit › Paste without formatting.

If ⌘⇧V does nothing, a browser extension may have claimed the shortcut. ⌥⇧⌘V is the fallback. To fix text already in the document, select it and use Format › Clear formatting (⌘\).

Microsoft Word for Mac

Word does its own thing, so the steps change:

1. Paste with ⌘V.
2. Click the small Paste Options button that appears next to the pasted text.
3. Choose Keep Text Only.

Or, before pasting, use Edit › Paste Special and pick Unformatted Text. Word’s Edit menu names the Mac shortcut Paste and Match Formatting rather than Paste and Match Style. That naming matters for the system-wide trick below.

Slack

Slack’s Mac app has an Edit menu like any other app. Copy, click in the message box, and choose Edit › Paste and Match Style. If the shortcut shown there differs in your version, use the menu item. Slack’s keyboard shortcuts list doesn’t include a dedicated plain-paste shortcut, so the Edit menu is the reliable path.

Can I make “paste without formatting” the default on Mac?

Yes. You can tell macOS to run Paste and Match Style whenever you press ⌘V. This uses App Shortcuts, which bind a keystroke to a menu item by its exact name.

1. Open System Settings › Keyboard.
2. Click Keyboard Shortcuts….
3. Select App Shortcuts in the sidebar and click +.
4. For Application, keep All Applications.
5. For Menu title, type Paste and Match Style exactly, with the same capitals.
6. Click the Keyboard shortcut field and press ⌘V.
7. Click Done, then quit and reopen any app that was already open.

Now ⌘V pastes plain text in every app whose Edit menu has an item with that exact name.

Things to know before you rely on it:

• You lose ⌘V for rich paste. When you do want formatting, use Edit › Paste from the menu. You can also add a second App Shortcut for the menu title Paste on ⌥⇧⌘V to swap the two.
• Word needs its own entry. Add another App Shortcut with Application set to Microsoft Word and Menu title Paste and Match Formatting.
• Finder isn’t affected because it has no Paste and Match Style item, so copying files keeps working.
• Apps with custom menus may ignore it. Test in the three apps you use most.

To undo it, go back to App Shortcuts, select the entry and click −.

How do I strip formatting from the clipboard itself?

Sometimes you want the clipboard to hold only plain text, so that any app pastes it cleanly. Terminal does this in one line. It overwrites the clipboard with the plain-text version of what’s there:

pbpaste | pbcopy

pbpaste prints only the text, and pbcopy puts it back as plain text. Fonts, colours and links are gone. If you copied an image, this replaces it with nothing, so run it only on text.

You can save this as a Shortcuts action or a shell alias if you use it often:

alias plain='pbpaste | pbcopy'

Add that line to ~/.zshrc, open a new Terminal window, and type plain after copying.

How do clipboard managers paste plain text?

Most clipboard managers keep both the rich and the plain version of each copy, and let you choose at paste time. That’s often faster than remembering ⌥⇧⌘V, because you’re already in the paste panel.

App	Plain-text paste	Price
Maccy	⌥⇧↩ on a selected item	Free, open source
Raycast	Paste as plain text or rich text, your choice	Free plan includes it
Pastebot	Filters you can stack and bind to shortcuts	Paid, 14-day trial
FavTray Clipboard	⇧↩ pastes plain	Free tier, $4.99 Lifetime

We make FavTray, so weigh our take accordingly. FavTray Clipboard keeps rich text (RTF and HTML) with each copy and pastes it back as it was with ↩, or as plain text with ⇧↩ (⇧⌘↩ in the main window). It also has a Clean AI text action that strips the invisible zero-width and narrow no-break spaces AI chat answers often carry, which plain paste alone doesn’t remove. The quick paste panel has no shortcut until you set one; one click sets ⇧⌘V. Free includes 10 pastes into apps a day, and copying an item back is never limited.

Where a dedicated app does better: Pastebot’s filters can chain transformations (trim, change case, find and replace) in ways FavTray doesn’t. If you reformat text all day, look there.

For the full field, see the best clipboard managers for Mac.

What if Paste and Match Style is greyed out?

A few common reasons:

• The clipboard holds an image or a file. Paste and Match Style is for text.
• The cursor isn’t in an editable field. Click into the text box first.
• The app doesn’t support it. Fall back to pbpaste | pbcopy and a normal ⌘V.

If ⌘V itself does nothing, that’s a different problem. See copy paste not working on Mac for the pboard restart and other fixes.

Which approach should you use?

• Occasional plain paste: learn ⌥⇧⌘V. It works almost everywhere.
• You never want formatting: remap ⌘V with App Shortcuts, and add a Word entry if you use Word.
• You paste the same things repeatedly: a clipboard manager with a plain-paste key saves both the formatting fight and the re-copying. If you’re curious what you’ve copied lately, our guide to clipboard history on Mac shows the built-in Spotlight history first.
• You paste AI answers into email or docs: FavTray’s AI Writer rewrites selected text in place, and Clipboard’s Paste as rich text turns an AI’s Markdown into formatted text.

FavTray’s free tier covers the Clipboard tool with daily limits, and Lifetime is $4.99 once for 1 Mac, with a 7-day full trial and no card. Details on pricing.