Remove smart quotes and clean up copied text on a Mac

Text copied from a web page, document, or email brings more than the words. Here is what comes along, how to remove it with what's built into macOS, and where PlainType fits.

What comes along when you copy

• Formatting. Fonts, sizes, colors, and styles from the place you copied it.
• Hidden markup. Rich text carries structure you don't see until it pastes somewhere unexpected.
• Smart quotes. Curly “ ” and ‘ ’ instead of straight " and '. They read well in prose and get in the way where straight quotes are expected, like code, terminal commands, and data files.
• Markdown artifacts. Syntax characters left over from text written in Markdown, which show up as stray symbols anywhere that doesn't render Markdown.
• Stray whitespace. Extra spaces that ride along with the copy.

Stop macOS from adding smart quotes as you type

Open System Settings › Keyboard, go to Text Input, click Edit, and turn off Use smart quotes and dashes. This only changes what happens while you type. Text you copy from somewhere else keeps its curly quotes.

Replace smart quotes in text you already have

Use Find and Replace in your editor. Search for each curly character — “, ”, ‘, and ’ — and replace it with a straight " or '. That's four passes per document.

The Substitutions panel in Apple's apps (Edit › Substitutions › Show Substitutions) goes the other way: it applies smart quotes to existing text. It won't straighten them.

Drop the formatting

Paste with ⌥⇧⌘V (Paste and Match Style) to leave fonts and colors behind. It doesn't change the characters, so smart quotes and Markdown symbols still come through. More on pasting without formatting.

Clean it once, when you copy

PlainType does all of this in one step. It strips formatting, hidden markup, smart quotes, common Markdown artifacts, and stray whitespace from copied text, so what you paste is plain text that drops cleanly into notes, docs, chat, email, and task trackers.

• Auto-clean on copy. PlainType watches for rich text on the clipboard and writes back a cleaner plain-text version.
• Or clean on demand. Use the Clean button or ⌘⌥C (Command-Option-C), or record your own shortcut.
• Five recent cleans, each re-copyable, clearable in one click.
• Nothing leaves your Mac. No account, app analytics, backend, or network connection.

To see it work, copy formatted text from a web page or rich-text editor and paste it into a plain text field.

Related: How to paste without formatting on a Mac

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