Pasting now converts HTML and PDF markup to Markdown

Bug graveyard
1

The past few days Obsidian has suddenly changed behavior when pasting. Now it seems to constantly try to “smartly” convert whatever I’m pasting into Markdown. The problem is multifold:

  1. It’s often wrong
  2. It’s almost always horribly annoying
  3. There’s no option I can find to disable it
  4. The only way to “paste as plain text” is to use FOUR keys together - Shift + Cmd + Opt + V (on Mac)

I’ve disabled all plugins (third party and core) and enabled safe mode and disabled all custom CSS tweaks. The problem still occurs. I noticed the app was apparently auto-updated, I believe I was on version 0.9.x and now am on 0.10.1. I also know the devs are working on WYSIWYG type capabilities so I’m wondering if this is an issue caused by partial implementation.

Important to note this was not occurring until a couple days ago.

Impact

This is significantly disrupting my workflow. I’m currently copying over content from an old note taking system that has over 10,000 notes and reconstituting them into ZK-style notes in Obsidian. This is a long-term project. A lot of the note content is already in very discrete form and relatively easy to migrate over. This new behavior requires me to either clean up the markup every time I paste in the content or use a complex four finger chord when I already have weakness and prior injury in one of my fingers making that difficult and even painful every time. :frowning:

Example using my own content

Given the following Markdown text:

All copper wires emanate by producing a magnetic field -- shielding strategies are employed to reduce emanations & crosstalk: [[Signals propagate through a medium which impacts the signal]], [[Signal emanation creates interception risks]].

If I open the above in VSCode editor and copy that content then paste it into Obsidian I get this escaped output instead:

All copper wires emanate by producing a magnetic field -- shielding strategies are employed to reduce emanations & crosstalk: \[\[Signals propagate through a medium which impacts the signal\]\], \[\[Signal emanation creates interception risks\]\].

Copying the same passage from within Obsidian to Obsidian does not escape the content.

I expected instead to get exactly what was copied, with no escaping.

Steps to reproduce

Here is an example using content directly from this forum.

  1. Open this link in Safari: Obsidian Release v0.10.2 (Insider build)

  2. Copy “Shiny new things” and the two bullets underneath it

  3. Paste (Cmd+V) into an Obsidian note

Expected result

Shiny new things
You can now embed search queries in the page using the fenced code block syntax with query as the language, similar to how mermaid works. Note that this syntax does not work in Obsidian Publish.
Obsidian Publish now has a “Show search bar” option, which will add a search bar inside the navigation pane. This can be used to search for pages and headings.

Actual result

Shiny new things
----------------

-   You can now embed search queries in the page using the fenced code block syntax with `query` as the language, similar to how mermaid works. Note that this syntax does not work in Obsidian Publish.
-   Obsidian Publish now has a “Show search bar” option, which will add a search bar inside the navigation pane. This can be used to search for pages and headings.

In this case the result isn’t so bad, but this is simple markup. The point here is to provide an example anyone can reference.

Another example

  1. Google search in Safari: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&q=obsidian+is+awesome

  2. Copy the text of the first result, kmaasrud’s “awesome-obsidian” Github repo

  3. Paste the copied text into an Obsidian note

Expected result

github.com › kmaasrud › awesome-obsidian
Awesome stuff for Obsidian. Contribute to kmaasrud/awesome-obsidian development by creating an account on GitHub.

Actual result

[

github.com › kmaasrud › awesome-obsidian

](https://github.com/kmaasrud/awesome-obsidian)

[](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=obsidian+is+awesome&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#)

1.  [](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_JWu78VdgugJ:https://github.com/kmaasrud/awesome-obsidian+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari)

_Awesome_ stuff for _Obsidian_. Contribute to kmaasrud/_awesome_\-_obsidian_ development by creating an account on GitHub.

Environment

  • Operating system: macOS Catalina 10.15.7
  • Obsidian version: 0.10.1

Additional information

1 Like
2

To add: The behavior is inconsistent also. For example, when content is copied from some PDFs only text is copied over, while for others Obsidian attempts to convert it to Markdown, sometimes very badly.

I see after I submitted this (sorry) that this apparently is a feature but it is not optional: Make optional - Turn on/off paste that converts HTML content to Markdown links

I have a degeneration in one of my fingers which makes adapting to this attempt to “help” painful.

Please provide a means to turn this off and paste exactly what was copied as plain text by default, with the option to use a smaller key chord (and ideally also a right-click paste option) to paste in the “helpful” converted text.

3

As you have discovered, this is not a bug.

I am not sure if cmd-shift-v works on mac. Anyway, in 0.10.2, you can also hold shift while dropping to paste text without formatting.

4

cmd-shift-v will be added in 0.10.3 on mac