I built a clipboard tool to strip/keep specific formatting like Italics

Details

External ID

46463992

Source

HN

Company

—

Product

I built a clipboard tool to strip/keep specific formatting like Italics

Website domain

custompaste.com

Launched

Jan. 2, 2026

Cohort

—

Upvotes

38

Upvotes percentile

0.7536231884057971

Tags

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Fetched at

Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.

Updated at

Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.

Description

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 single "paste" behavior, the app lets you create reusable "Recipes" to define exactly how your text should land in your editor. It intercepts the clipboard, processes the structure locally, and transforms it based on your rules.It offers granular control over: Smart Preservation: You can strip or set specific font families and sizes but specifically preserve bold, italics, and hyperlinks. Structure: You can preserve tables while stripping the images inside them.Data Cleanup: It can instantly purge duplicate lines, sort lists alphabetically, or flatten extra blank lines.Text Fixes: It cleans up AI-generated artifacts (like "smart quotes" or em-dashes) and enforces casing (Title Case, Sentence Case).Privacy & Pricing: The app runs 100% locally on your machine, no cloud processing and no data harvesting. It is a one-time purchase (lifetime license), not a subscription. There is a free trial (first 100 pastes) so you can test if it fits your workflow.I’d love to hear your feedback on the "Recipe" approach or any other edge cases you struggle with when pasting text!

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