Make optional - Turn on/off paste that converts HTML content to Markdown links

you are right!
no, i would leave as it is… it’ a common UI to have paste with formatting, and paste with style match with cmd+option+shift+V

I like dragging and dropping the raw links because when I do care to have a format for it, I can just bring it over to what I already set up. If I’m writing something and decide a select group of words are worthy to associate with a link on the fly, I work with different windows, I’ll set up the link, and drag the URL over. If I don’t care to do that and just carry over the URL, I was likely never keeping it to begin with. I do that more than copy/paste because I have a clipboard that I use frequently for numerous tasks and so to drag and drop the raw links keeps those same raw links off my clipboard that I could (re)use for other tasks.

Just a simple on/off feature for the old way and new way. That’s it.

+1 from me.

In the next version, we’ll be adding a Shift+drop to drop in plaintext mode, similar to Ctrl+Shift+V

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Yeah I second this, now in 0.10.1 when I paste stuff from word files it comes with a gigantic amount of (I guess HTML or smth?) formatting junk as well as the actual text I need. Ctrl + shift + v works fine for me but would be great to toggle this.

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+1 to this. I just posted this in the bug forum before seeing this topic: Pasting now converts HTML and PDF markup to Markdown

TLDR on a Mac I have to use FOUR keys not just three to achieve the same result. I’m copying and pasting content from some 10,000 old notes I have into Obsidian over time and this drastically increases the overhead and since I have degeneration in one of my fingers the constant requirement to contort into this pattern is rapidly dissuading me from using Obsidian. That’s unfortunate because this is a fantastic piece of software.

Please make some basic accessibility considerations when developing features instead of assuming all users can adapt to a new mode especially when there is no opt in/out capability. Thank you for the consideration.

The change that came in with 0.10.1 (I think) that converts rich-text clipboard contents into Markdown results in text that is pasted from Terminal.app containing superfluous HTML like:

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Menlo; color: #4395ff} span.s1 {font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures} 

Rather than re-training our muscle memory to use a different shortcut to paste as plaintext, could that feature either be given a feature toggle so those of us who don’t need it can turn it off, or alternatively could the behaviour be inverted so the default paste retains the previous behaviour that we’re all used to and a different shortcut can be used to past HTML clipboard contents as Markdown please?

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A turn off switch will be implemented in 0.10.3

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Unfortunately, it’s now only possible to switch it off completely, not reverse the behavior of Ctrl-V and Ctrl-Shift-V which I think is more useful :frowning:

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Awesome idea :clap:

+1 for this. Pasting in text from the web is onerous now.

+1 for switching the behavior, or making that a toggle to switch the behaviors.

Overriding the universal paste command to behave differently breaks the user’s expected behavior and is jarring. I understand Obsidian is trying to be helpful here but its overriding user choice without giving us an opportunity to consent. It also breaks users out of the flow of working directly with the notes and instead forcing us to context switch and wrestle with Obsidian every time.

For context, I have carpal tunnel and a degeneration in a finger, and use a Kinesis keyboard for ergonomics and this requirement for an additional key every time I want to paste something is cumbersome and can get very painful. I’m sure I’m not the only person affected by things like this, so this configuration makes interacting with Obsidian more difficult than it needs to be.

@davecan you can disable it in the settings. You can also use drag-shift-drop. You can also use right-click menu.

What is “drag-shift-drop” ?

select the text, drag the selected text, hold shift while dropping on obsidian.

Can there be a middle ground - a keyboard shortcut to paste plain text?

I love this feature and use it a lot but just today I needed to paste in plain text as the text I was pasting in contained a lot of extraneous links.

the keyboard shourtcut to paste plain text is ctrl/cmd-shift-v.

I wanna add that
ctrl/cmd-v - paste with with formatting
ctrl/cmd-shift-v - paste text only
is standard across applications.

Thank you! I think I figured it out and maybe this needs more visibility. I had the third-party plugin “Paste into URL” installed which makes the Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+V the default shortcut

I went into the setting and changed the default for that plugin to something else.

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I personally would like to reverse the behavior of Ctrl+V / Ctrl+Shift+V myself. Several people have pointed out that the current behavior is the default, but that isn’t quite correct in my experience.

The current behavior is the default for rich text editors – for code editors, the reverse is usually the case. Ctrl+V pastes in the text you have, and Ctrl+V pastes in HTML.

As a coder using Obsidian as a knowledgebase, I love being able to write things in Markdown. I don’t use the Live Preview mode, so while I’d like to retain the option to paste with HTML, I certainly don’t want it as my default. Currently, I paste with Ctrl+V, undo with Ctrl+Z, and paste again with Ctrl+Shift+V. I’ve tried disabling the setting, but I also like to paste quotes with links sometimes, and I have no access to paste the HTML (as far as I know) with that option disabled.

I’d also like to add that the option need not be changed, but a custom (empty by default?) hotkey action could be added, e.g. “Paste - Auto-convert HTML” that the user can bind to whatever they like.

Hope my input here helps.

P.S. I have tried using the above plugin, but it seems to remove my ability to paste over things to purposefully overwrite them. I want Ctrl+V to be standard paste, and would like any other functionality to require modifier keys.

We are gonna stick with this default. Feel free to write a plugin to alter the behavior.