Copy URL as Plain Text in Chrome (2026)

If you want to copy URL as plain text, the shortest reliable answer is: copy it from the address bar, not from the page. Press Ctrl+L to focus the address bar, Ctrl+C to copy, Escape to return. What lands on your clipboard is a bare string with no markup, no anchor, and no styling — which is exactly what most people mean when they ask for a link without formatting.

The reason the question keeps coming up is that copying a link from a page does something different, and the difference is invisible until you paste. This guide explains what the clipboard is actually holding, how each destination app decides what to do with it, and how to get a bare address every time.

The Clipboard Holds More Than One Thing

Here is the mechanism that explains nearly every formatting surprise.

When you copy, the source application does not put one item on the clipboard. It puts several representations of the same content, each labeled with a format. The common ones for web content are:

text/plain — the characters, no markup.
text/html — a fragment of HTML, potentially including an anchor tag, inline styles, fonts, and colors.
Sometimes text/uri-list or a platform-specific URL flavor — used by browsers and file managers for drag-and-drop and link handling.

The destination application then picks whichever representation it prefers. Google Docs, Word, Outlook, Notion, and Slack all prefer text/html when it exists, because rich text is usually what a user wants. A code editor, a terminal, and a plain-text field take text/plain because it is the only thing they can render.

So the same copy produces different results in different destinations, and neither app is misbehaving. To copy URL as plain text reliably, you either need the source to write only a plain representation, or you need the destination to ignore the rich one.

Where the Copy Comes From Changes Everything

Not all URL copies are equal. Three sources, three different clipboard payloads.

The address bar. Ctrl+L, Ctrl+C. The address bar contains a plain string. There is no HTML representation to prefer, so every destination gets the same bare address. This is the most predictable way to copy URL as plain text and it works in every Chromium browser, Firefox, and Safari.

Right-click a link, "Copy link address". Chrome writes the target address of that anchor. In practice this also produces plain text in nearly every destination — Chrome does not attach a formatted anchor for this operation. It is the correct method for grabbing a link you are not currently on.

Selecting text that contains a link, then Ctrl+C. This is the one that causes trouble. You have selected page content, so Chrome writes both a plain-text version and an HTML fragment carrying the anchor, the surrounding styles, the font family, and the color. Paste that into a rich text destination and you get blue underlined text in whatever typeface the source site used. This is the copy people are usually complaining about.

Dragging a link into a document. Same problem, often worse — some applications treat a dragged link as an embed or a card rather than text.

The lesson is simple. If you want a bare address, copy from the address bar or from the link context menu. Do not copy the rendered link and hope for the best. For the address-bar-free version of this, chrome copy url without address bar covers the alternatives.

Paste Without Formatting: The Shortcut That Fixes It Downstream

When you cannot control the copy — someone sent you formatted text, or you already copied from a page — fix it at the paste.

Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS. Cmd+Shift+V on Mac. This is "paste and match style" or "paste without formatting", and it tells the destination to take the text/plain representation and drop everything else.

Support by application:

Google Docs, Sheets, Slides — Ctrl+Shift+V, fully supported.
Slack — Ctrl+Shift+V pastes without formatting. Useful because Slack otherwise renders a pasted link with its own unfurled preview card.
Notion — Ctrl+Shift+V pastes plain. A plain Ctrl+V on a copied link often creates a bookmark block or a mention instead.
Microsoft Word and Outlook — Ctrl+Shift+V works in recent versions; Ctrl+Alt+V opens Paste Special with a Unformatted Text option that works everywhere.
Gmail — Ctrl+Shift+V strips formatting in the compose window.
Apple Mail, Pages, Notes — Cmd+Shift+Option+V is the traditional "paste and match style" binding on macOS, with Cmd+Shift+V working in many apps.
VS Code, terminals, code editors — irrelevant, they only accept plain text anyway.

Two universal fallbacks when the shortcut is missing or captured by something else:

Paste into a plain-text intermediary. A terminal, a text editor, the address bar itself, or a browser search field. Copy back out and the rich representation is gone. Crude, always works.
Ctrl+Z immediately after pasting. In most editors, the auto-conversion to a link is a separate undo step from the paste itself. One undo removes the formatting and leaves the text.

Why Apps Auto-Link Even Plain Text

Here is the frustrating case: you did copy URL as plain text correctly, the clipboard genuinely contains only a bare string, and the destination still turns it into a blue clickable link.

That is not a clipboard problem. It is autoformatting in the destination. Google Docs, Word, Slack, Notion, and most modern editors detect anything that looks like an address and linkify it on paste or on the following space keystroke. The clipboard was clean; the app added the formatting.

Fixes, in order of preference:

Undo once, immediately. Ctrl+Z right after the paste reverts the autoformat without deleting the pasted text. Fastest and most reliable.
Turn off the autoformat rule. Word has it under AutoCorrect Options, AutoFormat As You Type, "Internet and network paths with hyperlinks". Google Docs has "Automatically detect links" under Tools, Preferences.
Remove the link after the fact. Select the text and use the remove-link control, or Ctrl+K then delete the target in some editors.
Break the pattern deliberately. In documentation where the address must not be clickable, some writers insert a zero-width character or wrap the address in backticks. Both are hacks; use only when the destination allows no other option.

Knowing which of the two problems you have — a rich clipboard or an autolinking editor — saves the most time. The test takes five seconds: paste into a plain text editor. If it is bare there, your clipboard was fine and the destination is autolinking.

Plain Text vs Rich Link vs Markdown

Three ways to move an address into a document, and each is right in different places.

Plain text. A bare address, exactly as copied. Wins when the destination is a code file, a config value, a terminal command, a plain-text email, a CSV, a chat where a preview card would be noise, or any document that will later be exported. Also wins on auditability — the reader can see the domain before clicking, which matters in security-sensitive contexts. Nothing about a plain address can be misleading, because there is no anchor text to disagree with the target.

Rich hyperlink. Anchor text with a hidden target. Wins in prose, where a hundred-character address in the middle of a sentence destroys readability. Also wins in reports and shared documents that are read rather than processed. The tradeoff is that the reader cannot see the destination without hovering, and the formatting travels awkwardly between applications. The full treatment is in copy url as hyperlink chrome.

Markdown. Bracketed anchor text followed by a parenthesized address. Plain text on the wire, rich when rendered. Wins for anything living in a repository, a wiki, a static site, or a chat tool that renders Markdown. The best of both when the destination understands it, and noise when it does not.

A reasonable default: plain text unless the destination is prose, Markdown if the destination renders it, rich links only in documents meant purely for human reading.

Situations Where Plain Text Is the Only Correct Answer

Worth listing, because these are the cases where a rich link is actively harmful.

In each of these, the habit of learning to copy URL as plain text by default saves a cleanup pass later.

Terminal commands. A curl or wget command with a formatted link pasted in fails in ways that are confusing, because invisible characters and smart quotes come along with the formatting.

Configuration files and environment variables. Same problem, plus the failure often surfaces at runtime rather than at edit time.

Code review and commit messages. Plain text is the medium. Anything else gets mangled.

Support tickets and bug reports. A reader needs to see the exact address, including query parameters, to reproduce. A friendly anchor label hides the part that matters.

Security review. Anchor text can say one thing while the target says another. That gap is the entire mechanism behind a large class of phishing. In any context where a reader is deciding whether a link is trustworthy, showing the address is the safe choice.

Spreadsheets. A rich link in a cell breaks sorting, filtering, and formula references in most spreadsheet tools. Plain text keeps the cell a value.

Anything you will process programmatically. A script reading a list of addresses wants strings, not markup.

The Fastest Reliable Method

Pulling all of this together into a workflow.

For the page you are currently on, the native path is Ctrl+L, Ctrl+C, Escape. Plain text guaranteed, works anywhere, costs three keystrokes and your scroll position — because focusing the address bar pulls focus out of the page.

To remove even that cost, bind a hotkey that writes the address directly to the clipboard without touching the address bar. The Ctrl+Shift+C extension does exactly this: one keystroke, the current tab address as a plain string, no focus change, no scroll loss. It writes only the plain representation, which is why the result pastes identically into a terminal, a spreadsheet, and a Google Doc. Clipboard permission only, no network calls, no data collection — and the absence of page access is not incidental, since an extension that formats a title alongside the address must read the page while one that copies only the address does not.

For a link inside a page, right-click and choose "Copy link address". Plain by default.

For a link you already copied badly, paste with Ctrl+Shift+V, or paste into a text editor and copy back out.

For a whole window of tabs, an extension that dumps every open address as a newline-separated list gives you plain text by construction — a list of addresses has no formatting to lose.

Platform and Browser Differences

Windows and Linux. Ctrl+L, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Shift+V. Windows also has a clipboard history at Win+V that shows what is stored, which is a useful diagnostic when you are unsure what a copy produced.

Mac. Cmd+L, Cmd+C, and Cmd+Shift+V or Cmd+Shift+Option+V depending on the application. macOS has no built-in clipboard inspector, so a third-party clipboard manager fills that role.

ChromeOS. Search+V opens the built-in clipboard history, showing the last several items including whether an entry is text or an image. Everything else matches the Windows bindings.

Firefox and Safari. Address bar copying behaves identically. Safari differs on paste-and-match-style bindings within macOS applications, not in the copy itself.

Mobile. Tapping the address bar and choosing Copy is the way to copy URL as plain text on a phone, and it always produces a bare string. The complication moves to the destination app, where long-press paste menus sometimes offer "Paste as plain text" and sometimes do not.

Privacy: What a Copy Actually Does

Copying is local. The text moves from the browser to the operating system clipboard, and no request goes to the site. A page cannot observe that you copied its address, and no data leaves the machine.

Two adjacent things are worth knowing:

The clipboard is readable by other applications. Anything running on your machine can generally read it, and some applications poll it. Modern operating systems have started surfacing notifications when an app reads the clipboard. Nothing about copying an address is sensitive, but the general principle applies to anything you copy.

Copy extensions differ enormously in permission scope. One that copies only the tab address needs clipboard access and the active tab. One that copies a formatted title, or a Markdown link, or a page excerpt needs to read page content on every site. Both are legitimate; they are not equivalent in exposure. Match the permission to the feature you actually use. The broader framework is in privacy focused chrome extensions.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I copy URL as plain text in Chrome? Press Ctrl+L to focus the address bar, Ctrl+C to copy, then Escape to return to the page. The address bar holds a plain string with no HTML representation, so every destination receives the same bare address. A dedicated copy hotkey achieves the same result in one keystroke without moving focus.

Why does my pasted link show up as blue underlined text? One of two causes. Either you copied rendered page content, so the clipboard also carried an HTML fragment with an anchor and styles that the destination preferred, or your clipboard was clean and the destination application auto-detected the address and linked it itself. Paste into a plain text editor to tell which.

What is the paste without formatting shortcut? Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS, Cmd+Shift+V on Mac in most applications. Microsoft Office also offers Ctrl+Alt+V for Paste Special with an Unformatted Text option, and macOS applications often use Cmd+Shift+Option+V for paste and match style.

Does the clipboard really hold two versions of what I copied? Yes. A single copy operation can write several representations simultaneously — commonly text/plain and text/html — and the receiving application chooses which one to use. That is why the same copy pastes differently into a code editor and a word processor.

How do I stop an app from auto-linking a pasted address? Press Ctrl+Z immediately after the paste. In most editors the autoformat is a separate undo step, so one undo strips the link and leaves the text. Alternatively, disable the autoformat rule in the application settings.

Is copying a URL as plain text safer than copying rich text? More predictable, and in one specific sense safer. A rich link can display anchor text that disagrees with its target, which is the basic mechanism behind link-based phishing. A plain address shows exactly where it goes.

Does copying a URL send anything to the website? No. The copy is entirely local — text moves to your operating system clipboard and no network request is made. The page cannot detect it, whether you use the keyboard, the context menu, or an extension.

One Keystroke, One Clean String

To copy URL as plain text reliably, control the source rather than fighting the destination: take the address from the address bar or the link context menu, not from selected page content, and use Ctrl+Shift+V when someone else hands you formatted text. That covers essentially every case. If you copy addresses more than a few times a day, remove the three-keystroke tax entirely — Ctrl+Shift+C puts the current tab address on the clipboard as a bare string in one keystroke, without focus changes or scroll loss. Free, clipboard permission only, zero data collection. Install it and your links paste the same way into every application you use.