How to always Paste and Match Style on macOS

How to always Paste and Match Style on macOS

It’s safe to say that some of us do a lot of copy-pasting during the day. (StackOverflow even sells a dedicated keyboard).

While the ability to copy content from one app and paste it into another is probably in the TOP 3 productivity features of a modern computer, it doesn’t come without its quirks…

Just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about - when you copy some text content from a place with formatting (like custom font, colors, etc.) and then paste it into another app that also supports (to some extent) rich text formatting.

By default, copy-paste (⌘ + C / ⌘ + V) allows an app to capture all available content types when pasting. As a result, copying a snippet from a web page comes in both plain text and rich/formatted text. All worldly computer things have opted to use the richest form of content available in the clipboard when pasting for reasons beyond my understanding 🙄.

Honestly, I can’t remember when (if at all) I needed this behavior. In all cases, I want the source text to match the destination formatting as best as possible. This feature exists; it’s the Edit > Paste and Match Style command.

To fix this in (almost) all apps, you head to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts and then hit the plus button to create a new shortcut with the menu title “Paste and Match Style” and assigning ⌘ + V! That’s it 🎉!

⚠️ This technique does not work in Microsoft apps like Word, which chooses to override and shamelessly disregard the user’s system preferences or (most of) the text services provided by macOS 🤷🏻‍♂️.