# Clipboard Normalizer

> Source: <https://www.jefftk.com/p/clipboard-normalizer-in-mac-app-store>
> Published: 2026-09-29 04:13:28+00:00

| [Clipboard Normalizer in Mac App Store](https://www.jefftk.com/p/clipboard-normalizer-in-mac-app-store) | September 28th, 2026 | 
|  | *[ai](https://www.jefftk.com/news/ai)* ,*[tech](https://www.jefftk.com/news/tech)* | 

[wrote a program](https://www.jefftk.com/p/clipboard-normalization)to normalize your clipboard, removing fonts / colors / sizes and mostly leaving semantic information: anything that can't be represented in Markdown was dropped. Now that I can have

[walk me through](https://www.jefftk.com/p/teleoperated-humans)things, however, I've made it available as a free app

[on the Mac App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clipboard-normalizer/id6809465278):

It's now a single menu bar app, which offers a few options:

In addition to normalizing your clipboard, it can also convert copied rich text to markdown and back again.

Video demo:

[youtube](https://www.youtube.com/v/V1cxkWJH37w)
It's amazing how much software development has changed in the last few
months.  In December, when I made the first version, it was simple
enough that I think I still wrote it by hand (with some asking
questions to Claude) and then Claude walked me through using [Platypus](https://sveinbjorn.org/platypus) to package the
script as a Mac app.  This time I just said I wanted it in the Mac App
Store and Claude rewrote it to be compatible.  This included:

- Replacing [Pandoc](https://pandoc.org/) (GPL and so
incompatible the the App Store TOS) with[SwiftSoup](https://github.com/scinfu/SwiftSoup) .
- Writing Swift code to wrap SwiftSoup.
- Merging the separate "Normalize Clipboard" and "Markdownify Clipboard" apps into a single menu bar app.
- Making it show a little toast describing what it had just done, including an FYI if you tried an impossible conversion.
- Adding tests, including ones for XSS and others for very strange formatting.
- Fixing a few edge cases the old one mishandled.
- Walking me through the App Store review process.

I needed to provide a little guidance, in telling it where I wanted to draw the line on which formatting to keep, and I did notice a few small conversion bugs.

It failed the review process the first time, mostly because I was lazy and skipped Claude's recommendation to make a demo video. The second time it got through fine.

*Referenced in:*