Paste from other apps, copy as Markdown

Bring text in from Word, Pages, a browser or a plain-text file so it looks like the rest of your note, and take it back out as Markdown.

Paste formatted text

Copy a passage in Word, Pages, Excel, Keynote or a browser, and paste it into a note with ⌘V. You get the words, not a picture of them — even where the other app also offers a picture. A photo or a scan, which has no words, still arrives as an attachment.

The words take on the note's own look: they become body text in the note's typeface, whatever size and font they had before, so a note you paste into several times still looks like one note.

Kept — bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, links, and the shape of paragraphs and lists, with their indents.
Left behind — the other app's typesetting. Text justified for a printed page is set naturally in the note's narrower column, with the note's own line spacing.
Headings are not guessed — text set large in Word stays body text. To make it a heading, type # at the start of the line or use the Aa menu.

Web addresses become links

A web address in what you paste becomes a link, the same blue, underlined link Add Link makes — whether you copied it from the browser's address bar, from a message or from the middle of a paragraph. https://…, www.…, a bare address such as example.com/page and an email address all count; an email address opens Mail. A file name such as readme.md or a version number does not.

A link the pasted text already had keeps its own address and words, an address inside code stays code, and what you type after a pasted address is not part of it.

An address you type becomes a link as well, as soon as you type the space or Return after it.

Paste Markdown

Plain text is read as Markdown, so **bold** arrives bold and ## makes a heading. This works when you paste with ⌘V and when you drag text in from another app — from a terminal, a plain-text editor, or a .md file. Headings, lists, tables, quotes and callouts written > [!tip] Title all come through.

Text that already has formatting of its own keeps it, and any asterisks in it stay as characters.

Tip: To paste only the plain text underneath, read as Markdown and ignoring the other app's formatting, press ⇧⌘V.

Copy as Markdown

Select text in a note and press ⇧⌘C. The selection goes to the clipboard as Markdown, ready to paste into another Markdown app — a callout, for example, is written > [!tip] Title, the way Obsidian writes it.

You can also copy whole blocks: right-click a block's grip (☰), or a selected block, and choose Copy as Markdown.

You can also copy whole blocks: select them, then in the bar at the bottom tap Copy ▸ Copy as Markdown.

Note: Copying commented text doesn't copy its comments.