Paste without the colors

Why pasted text goes wrong

Chrome puts the colors it sees into the clipboard along with the text. Copy from an AI assistant, a docs site or a chat in dark mode and the pale text and dark backgrounds come along. In a dark editor it can look normal; whoever reads it on white finds a black block, or text that seems to be missing.

Paste as usual

Cleanup is on from the start. Paste with Ctrl+V (⌘V on a Mac) as you always have: colors and backgrounds are dropped on the way in, and bold, italics, headings, lists and links stay.

To switch it off for a moment, click the toolbar icon and clear Clean pasted formatting. The same switch is in Settings → Pasting, under Pasted formatting.

Where it works

Rich-text editors on any website, in every frame: anything editable in place, such as mail composers, document and ticket editors, and chat boxes that keep formatting. Plain text boxes never hold formatting, so there's nothing to clean there.

Chrome doesn't let extensions run on its own pages or the Chrome Web Store, so pasting there is left alone.

Set the font and color too

Pasted text takes on the editor's own font and color unless you pick one. See Choose the font and color of pasted text.

Related guides

Next, read Choose the font and color of pasted text, Paste with hotkeys or Troubleshoot common issues.