clip2md/README.md

clip2md — Paste to Markdown

Paste a long Reddit thread, an article, or any formatted web content, and save it as clean Markdown in one click. Works on desktop and phone. Runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded, no account, no tracking, works offline.

Live demo: https://clip2md.heidrich-digital.de

Why

Copying from the web and getting usable Markdown is usually two or three tools and a lot of cleanup. clip2md collapses that into: paste, press save. Rich HTML from the clipboard is converted to tidy Markdown automatically (via Turndown with GitHub-flavored tables, strikethrough and task lists); plain text is kept verbatim. The filename is proposed for you from the first heading plus the date, so it drops straight into an Obsidian vault, a wiki, or a repo.

Features

• One-click paste. The Paste button reads the clipboard directly (Async Clipboard API) and picks the HTML version when there is one. Browsers ask once for permission; ⌘V always works too.
• Smart paste. Formatted HTML (copy from a browser, e.g. Reddit ⌘A → ⌘C) is converted to clean Markdown. Plain text stays raw. Same ⌘V for both, no mode switch.
• Page clean-up. Pasting a whole web page drops navigation, cookie banners, share buttons and sidebars; articles are extracted with Mozilla Readability. Undo clean-up re-inserts the unfiltered version with one click.
• Reddit threads. New and old Reddit: post title, subreddit and author on top, no vote counts or Reply/Share leftovers, comments as nested quotes with (OP) marked.
• Open in Obsidian. Optional button that creates the note straight in your vault (vault and folder configurable), via the obsidian:// URI and the clipboard — no file detour.
• History (opt-in). Keeps the last 10 clips in this browser's IndexedDB. Off by default.
• iPhone shortcut. iOS keeps web apps out of the share sheet; a four-step Shortcut fills the gap (see docs/ios-shortcut.md or iPhone shortcut in the app footer).
• Force raw. ⌘/Ctrl+Shift+V pastes the next clip as plain text, skipping conversion.
• Live preview. Toggle a side-by-side rendered Markdown view (marked + DOMPurify).
• Auto filename. Derived from the first heading + date, e.g. 2026-08-11-my-thread.md. Editable — once you type your own, it stops overwriting. Switch to a date+time pattern in settings.
• YAML front matter. Optional: prepend title, date, source URL and tags for knowledge bases like Obsidian.
• Conversion options. Links as plain text, strip images, bullet marker (- / * / +), heading style (ATX # / Setext).
• Open & drop files. Pick or drop an .html, .md or .txt file to load or convert it.
• Mobile-first. 44 px touch targets, 16 px inputs (no iOS zoom), safe-area aware, settings as a bottom sheet; Save hands the file to the share sheet (Files, Obsidian, mail) on phones.
• Bilingual. English and German, switchable in the header.
• Light & dark. Warm paper, one strong blue, clipboard logo; dark mode one click away.
• Save / copy / clear, word + character count and reading time.
• Installable PWA, fully offline after first load. On Android, clip2md shows up in the system share sheet: share a page or selection straight into the editor.

Everything is client-side. No servers, no CDNs, no third-party requests — GDPR-friendly by construction.

Keyboard shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
Save .md	⌘/Ctrl + S
Paste (smart)	⌘/Ctrl + V
Paste raw	⌘/Ctrl + Shift + V
Close settings	Esc

Tech

• Single self-contained index.html (inline CSS/JS, OKLCH tokens, Space Grotesk + Space Mono).
• Vendored, no CDN: Turndown + GFM plugin, marked, DOMPurify, fonts — all under vendor/.
• Served by nginx:alpine (Dockerfile + nginx.conf) with a service worker for offline use (network-first for pages, cache-first for static assets).
• No build step, no backend, no database.

Run locally

docker build -t clip2md .
docker run --rm -p 8080:80 clip2md   # http://localhost:8080

Or just open index.html in a browser (the service worker only registers over http/https).

Self-host

Any static host works — point it at this repo. The reference deployment uses Coolify with a Dockerfile build and a reverse proxy for TLS.

Update vendored libraries

npm pack turndown turndown-plugin-gfm marked dompurify @mozilla/readability @fontsource/space-grotesk @fontsource/space-mono
# turndown/dist/turndown.js                    -> vendor/turndown.js
# turndown-plugin-gfm/dist/turndown-plugin-gfm.js -> vendor/turndown-plugin-gfm.js
# marked/lib/marked.umd.js                     -> vendor/marked.umd.js
# dompurify/dist/purify.min.js                 -> vendor/purify.min.js
# @mozilla/readability/Readability.js           -> vendor/Readability.js
# @fontsource/*/files/*-latin-{400,500,700}-normal.woff2 -> vendor/fonts/

Bump the CACHE constant in sw.js whenever an asset changes so clients pick it up.

License

MIT. Turndown, marked, DOMPurify, Mozilla Readability, Space Grotesk and Space Mono are under their respective MIT/Apache/OFL licenses.