I’ve decided to start a little series about some of the apps, utilities and services I use. Some of the things that make life easier, but are often overlooked. I’ll keep these short—just enough to give an idea of what each tool does and why I like it. Maybe you’ll find something new to try out, or perhaps you’ll have some suggestions of your own.

First up is a little utility called Pure Paste. It’s a simple menu bar utility for Mac that does one thing: it strips formatting when you copy and paste.

My friend Andy recommended this to me, and I’ve got to say: it’s one of those tools that makes you wonder how you ever lived without it.

It saves the frustration of pasting something and then having to clean up the formatting. It’s just much easier for the default to be no formatting, but maybe that’s just me.

I know there’s a “Paste and Match Style” command, but it seems to change between apps. I can never remember the shortcut, and if I tried, I’d probably forget something more important! Pure Paste just sits there and does its thing…

When you do want to keep formatting, you can toggle it on and off. The icon reflects its current status.

It’s one of those tools that doesn’t try to do a million things. It does one job, and it does it well. If you’re tired of fighting with formatted text every time you paste something, give it a shot.

Pure Paste is free, available from the Mac App Store. It’s written by Sindre Sorhus and you can learn more at his website.