Stop TextEdit adding rich formatting on Mac

When you paste into TextEdit and the text arrives in the wrong font, a different size, or with a coloured background from the web page you copied it from, the document is in rich-text mode — it faithfully keeps whatever styling came with the clipboard. Set TextEdit's default to plain text and pastes drop their formatting automatically. For documents you want to keep rich, one paste shortcut strips styling on demand.

Why paste brings styling with it

Copying from a browser, Mail, or Word puts two things on the clipboard: the text and its formatting. A rich-text TextEdit document accepts both, so a paragraph you grabbed from a website lands with its web font, colour, and size intact — often clashing badly with the rest of your document. A plain-text document has no concept of styling, so it takes the words and discards everything else. That single difference is the whole fix.

The permanent fix: default to plain text

Make plain text the starting mode for every new document, and pastes stop carrying formatting for good:

1. Open TextEdit and choose TextEdit → Settings.
2. On the New Document tab, set Format to Plain text.

Or set the same preference from Terminal, with the undo command ready underneath:

# New documents are plain text — pastes lose their formatting
defaults write com.apple.TextEdit RichText -int 0

# Undo — restore rich text as the default
defaults write com.apple.TextEdit RichText -int 1

Relaunch TextEdit to apply it. This is consistent across macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia. New windows now accept only text; existing documents keep their current mode.

For documents that must stay rich

Sometimes you genuinely want a formatted document but a single clean paste. Instead of pasting normally, use Paste and Match Style:

• Press Shift+Option+Cmd+V, or choose Edit → Paste and Match Style.
• The pasted text takes on the formatting of the surrounding text in your document rather than the source's, so it blends in instead of standing out.

This works in almost every Mac app, not just TextEdit — worth committing to muscle memory. See pasting without formatting on Mac for making it your default paste everywhere.

Strip formatting from a document you already have

If a document is already full of mismatched fonts and colours, flatten it in one move: choose Format → Make Plain Text or press Shift+Cmd+T. TextEdit warns that styling will be removed — that's the point — and you're left with clean text you can save as .txt. It's the fastest way to rescue a note that turned into a patchwork of pasted styles.