Hey all, often when I’m taking notes from a website, I just want to quickly get relevant text into my notes and have it linked to the website URL (external links).
Often I have to:
Copy the text from the site
Paste the text, i.e.: “Text”
Copy the URL, i.e.: https://example.com/
Surround the text with the external link syntax
paste the URL: [Text](https://example.com/)
Do this a dozen times a day and it adds up in a week.
Moreover, I am a fan of mouseless navigation. I currently use Vimium to navigate Chrome mouselessly. Having to stop and copy/paste + format text breaks my reading flow.
So a few weeks ago I created a simple Chrome extension to simplify copy/pasting external links AND still use Vimium: Copy-Formatter.
This extension lets you define “paste templates” - how you want to format your pasted text. It works with Vimium and lets me copy/paste a text quickly and continue my reading flow uninterrupted. If you don’t use Vimium, it could still save you a few keystrokes by pasting an already-formatted markdown text.
Note: this is a quick project and it could be a bit buggy. It’s currently only available on Chrome. I’ve been using it for the past 2 weeks and so far it’s been great. Check it out and let me know what you think! (improvements, bugs, etc)
It is not publicly available on the Chrome Web Store or GitHub. However, there are several alternative Chrome extensions that can help streamline the process of copying web content as Markdown links, which might suit your needs: This extension allows you to copy selected web content as Markdown, preserving headings, links, images, tables, and more. You can use the keyboard shortcut Alt+C (or Option+C on Mac) to copy content in Markdown format, making it ideal for working with LLMs or creating. Markdown Copy is a lightweight extension that enables you to quickly convert web content into clean Markdown. It supports smart image conversion with alt text, automatic link formatting, and clean text formatting (bold, italic, lists). You can activate it using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+M (or Cmd+Shift+M on Mac). This extension allows you to copy the title and URL of a page in Markdown format, making it easy to reference sources in your notes.
The Github project is public. Both should be available to public. Let me know if I miss anything.
Regarding your suggestion of Markdown Copy, are you referring to this Markdown Copy extension? When I searched for “Markdown Copy”, I see over 1 dozen extensions.
Flow is important to me. I am a heavy Vim user and I want to mimic the flow of reading and taking notes between the browser and obsidian as close as reading / editing with Vim as possible. That’s why I set the shortcut key of Copy-Formatter to " , to mimic Vim’s register key. It makes copy/pasting a text from the browser (+ Vimium) like copy/pasting from a register. I guess it makes Copy-Formatter more like an extension to Vimium itself. Meanwhile, the Markdown Copy extension’s key: Cmd + Shift + M does not go with the Vim workflow. However, this extension does offer a wealth of features.. I’ll definitely take a look at it. Thank you for the suggestion!
