This is a pretty useful one. If you’ve copied text from somewhere and want to paste it without formatting on macOS or iPadOS, here’s what you need to do.
Paste Text Without Formatting and Never Ruin Your Document or Note Again with this macOS and iPadOS Keyboard Shortcut
Copying text for reference or quoting in a document is something we do on a regular basis. But, if you’re using an app like Word, Pages or Notes on the Mac, it will also drop in the original format of the text from the source, which may ultimately mess things up in the document or note you’re working on.
Thankfully, there is a way to paste text without formatting in macOS and iPadOS, both. Interestingly, the feature was actually removed from iPadOS 17 and was reintroduced in a subsequent update, and it made no sense to me.
To get started, copy any string of text from somewhere, literally anywhere at all. Now open the document or note where you want to paste it, but instead of pressing Command+V, you press the following combination: Command+Option+Shift+V
Once the keyboard shortcut is executed, the text will be pasted without any sort of special formatting and it will match your document or note perfectly, the way it should be.
I find myself using this shortcut so many times. In fact, I don’t even use the regular Command+V keyboard combination for a regular copy and paste task. It needs to be a full format erasure before it goes into my document or note. There’s no way I’m letting a rogue tag or format element into the document I’m working on.
Anyway, you don’t have to go this far at all and how you use this shortcut is entirely up to you, now that you know about it, of course.
For more tips and tricks, be sure to check out my dedicated section by going to this link.
