Smart Paste for Obsidian

An Obsidian plugin that intelligently pastes content with preserved indentation hierarchy, inline formatting, and automatic bullet point inheritance.

The Problem

When pasting content from AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude), websites, or other markdown editors into Obsidian:

• Indentation breaks - Nested lists lose their hierarchy
• Extra empty lines - Unwanted blank lines appear between bullet points
• Formatting lost - Bold, italic, code, links, and images disappear
• No bullet inheritance - Multi-line text doesn't auto-convert to bullet lists

The Solution

Smart Paste intercepts paste events and:

1. Preserves relative indentation - Pasted content inherits the current cursor's indent level
2. Maintains hierarchy - Nested lists stay nested
3. Keeps inline formatting - **bold**, *italic*, `code`, [links](url), and ![images](src) are preserved
4. Cleans empty lines - Removes extra blank lines between bullets
5. Auto-inherits bullets - When pasting into a bullet line, each line becomes a bullet

Demo

Before (native Obsidian paste):

- Parent item
- Child item 1    ← Lost indentation!
- Child item 2    ← Lost indentation!

After (with Smart Paste):

- Parent item
  - Child item 1  ← Preserved!
  - Child item 2  ← Preserved!

Auto-inherit bullets - Paste plain text into - :

Input (plain text):
Line 1
Line 2
Line 3

Output (when cursor is at "- "):
- Line 1
- Line 2
- Line 3

Installation

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest release from Releases
2. Extract to your vault's .obsidian/plugins/smart-paste/ directory
3. Reload Obsidian
4. Enable "Smart Paste" in Settings → Community plugins

From Source

cd /path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins
git clone https://github.com/gr-luo/obsidian-smart-paste.git smart-paste
cd smart-paste
npm install
npm run build

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
Paste Mode	Manual	Manual: use command/hotkey for smart paste. Auto: hijack all paste events
Clean Empty Lines	On	Remove extra blank lines between bullets
Indent Style	Auto	Choose: Auto detect / Tab / Spaces
Spaces per Indent	2	Number of spaces per indent level

Usage

Manual Mode (Default, Recommended)

• Cmd+V - Normal paste (native Obsidian behavior)
• Command Palette → "Smart Paste: Paste with Smart Formatting" - Smart paste
• Set a custom hotkey (e.g., Cmd+Shift+V) in Settings → Hotkeys

Auto Mode (Experimental)

• Cmd+V - All pastes are automatically processed with smart formatting

Features

Content	Conversion
Lists <ul>/<ol>	Smart indentation preserved
Links <a href>	[text](url)
Images <img>	
Bold <strong>	**text**
Italic <em>	*text*
Code <code>	`text`
Tables <table>	Skipped (uses plain text)

How It Works

1. Captures paste event in DOM capture phase (before other plugins)
2. Reads HTML clipboard (text/html) to preserve structure
3. Converts HTML to Markdown with proper indentation
4. Applies relative indentation based on cursor position
5. Auto-inherits bullet prefix when pasting multi-line text

Technical Details

• Uses document.addEventListener('paste', fn, true) for event priority
• Parses HTML with DOMParser for accurate hierarchy detection
• Tracks prevWasParagraph state for correct list indentation
• Recursively processes inline elements to preserve formatting
• Detects tables and skips processing to avoid corruption

Compatibility

• Obsidian v1.0.0+
• Desktop and Mobile

Excluded Areas

Smart Paste automatically skips these areas (native paste behavior):

• File title
• Property/Metadata (frontmatter) section
• Code blocks

Known Limitations

• Tables are skipped (plain text fallback)
• Complex nested HTML structures may not convert perfectly

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build (one-time)
npm run build

# Watch mode
npm run dev

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome! See CLAUDE.md for development guidelines.

License

MIT

Credits

Built with Claude Code