Clean Web Clipper answers the questions people ask most about web clippers: whether a clip can be lost, what leaves the browser, which pages it refuses and what to do when a site breaks. Most questions in this Clean Web Clipper FAQ come from complaints about other clippers. If yours is missing, write to cws@lessroutinemorelife.com.
Add to Chrome (free)Free, no account · tested on 512 pages in August 2026, 0 crashes. Extraction works offline; one switch in settings stops usage events.For Chrome on a computer
Will it stop working, and what if a site breaks?
Clean Web Clipper is built on Manifest V3, so it will not stop working when the old extension format is switched off. If it breaks on a site you need, send the address: the “I need this site” button puts it first in the fix queue.
Which browsers does it work in?
Desktop Chrome only: Clean Web Clipper has not been tested in other browsers or on phones.
Does it work on Linux?
Not tested yet: Clean Web Clipper has had no test run on Linux, so there is no promise. By design the window manager, the clipboard and the desktop environment play no part in saving, because Chrome writes the file itself.
What if it breaks on a site I need?
If Clean Web Clipper breaks on a site you need, write to cws@lessroutinemorelife.com with the address. The settings page has a report that already lists the sites where extraction failed, so copying it into the email is enough – no need to describe anything. On the page where it refused, the “I need this site” button puts that address first in the fix queue.
Do I need an account? No, Clean Web Clipper has no account, no registration and no sign-in: Clean Web Clipper works as soon as it is installed, and nothing you clip is tied to a login.
Can a clip be lost without me noticing?
When Clean Web Clipper saves to a folder or an Obsidian vault, the file is written straight into it, and if a name is already taken a number is added, as in Article-2.md, instead of overwriting the existing file (a browser without a folder picker saves through Downloads, which adds “(1)” instead). There is no protocol handler and no browser dialog in between, so there is no step where a stray click drops the clip; Chrome’s save dialog appears only for the “Download .md” button in the clip window, while an icon click or shortcut set to download saves to Downloads without one. The Usefulness screen in the clip window also counts clips that worked and clips that didn’t, and the report under “How you use it” in settings lists clicks against notes, so a silent gap would be visible.
Then what is the usage report in the settings?
The usage report in the Clean Web Clipper settings is a set of counters that live in your browser. They record how many clips you made, how much time that saved, which destination you used, and where an article could not be found. The report itself is shown to you in full and leaves only if you copy it and email it yourself; the Usefulness screen in the clip window also shows how many addresses have been sent – the count, not the addresses themselves.
Does it slow the browser down, and what does it need to run?
Does it slow the browser down? No. Clean Web Clipper runs only when you click the icon or press the shortcut and has no permission on the sites you read, so other pages are untouched. In a run on 17 live pages on 12 September 2026, the clip window answered in 90–820 ms – with a ready Markdown preview or a refusal; the slowest was an 86,000-character Stack Overflow thread.
Do I need Obsidian running?
No. Clean Web Clipper writes the .md file directly into a folder you picked in settings, using the browser file access API. Obsidian can be closed, uninstalled, or absent entirely – the file appears in the folder regardless, and Obsidian picks it up next time it opens the vault.
Why do I sometimes get a note with only the title and no body in other tools?
A note arrives with only the title because many clippers hand it over through the clipboard, and on Linux under Wayland only the focused window may read the clipboard. If the target app is not focused at that moment, the body never arrives. Clean Web Clipper never puts the note on the clipboard to save it, so that failure mode does not exist here.
Does the Markdown keep tables and images?
Will images come out broken? No. Images are kept as ordinary Markdown links with no stray escaping, so they render as soon as you paste. What the extension does not do is download image files next to the note – the link points at the original.
Are tables handled properly?
Yes, Clean Web Clipper handles tables, within limits. Tables are serialised by our own code rather than a generic converter, so a cell holding a list or a snippet of code no longer collapses the row. A small uneven two-column table (up to 12 rows) becomes key: value lines, the key in bold, instead of a grid. A merged cell cannot be expressed in Markdown, so the cells after it can shift, and a caption is dropped. On the 109-page head-to-head of 30 August 2026 it kept fewer tables than MarkSnip, mostly where the article root was picked too narrow.
Are dates right, and what happens on a page that is not an article?
Does the publication date come out right? Clean Web Clipper gets the publication date right when the page declares one. The date is read from JSON-LD, article:published_time, citation_date (the arXiv, PubMed and IEEE standard), time[datetime] and Unix stamps, in that order. When the page carries no date at all, the frontmatter has no date line rather than one filled with today. Some kinds of site – shops and timetables in particular – simply never publish a date.
What happens on a page that is not an article?
On a page that is not an article, Clean Web Clipper often says so. When more than a quarter of the text sits inside link labels, as on many storefronts and search results, it writes an extraction: no-article marker and stops instead of handing you a page of link labels. Many feeds stay under that threshold and come out as a list of headlines.
Where does it stop, and what does it cost?
Can it process several tabs at once? No. Clean Web Clipper works on one page at a time and has no crawler and no batch mode. If you need dozens of pages in one go, this is the wrong tool.
Can it highlight passages on the page like a marker?
No, Clean Web Clipper has no highlighter and no annotation layer. The extension converts what is already on the page and does not add anything to it.
Does it summarise or rewrite the text?
No, Clean Web Clipper converts the text without editing it: no summarising, no reordering, no rewriting. What the page said is what the note says.
Can I clip just the part I selected?
Yes, Clean Web Clipper can clip just the selection: select something on the page and that is what gets clipped; select nothing and you get the whole page. When a selection was taken, a strip at the top of the window says so and offers the whole page instead, and the behaviour can be turned off in settings.
Is it free?
Yes, Clean Web Clipper is entirely free. Every feature described here is in the installed extension: no page limit, no account, no registration, no paid tier.
What does Clean Web Clipper send?
Does it send my pages anywhere? No, Clean Web Clipper does not send your pages anywhere. Extraction and conversion happen entirely inside the browser, and no page text or title ever leaves it. Five things do, to our own statistics server: the address of a page that failed – no article, a PDF, a script error or no response – or that you report with “I need this site”, so the extension can learn that site; the bare domain of a successful clip, never the path; the name of the extension screen you opened; which action you took with a clip – copy, file, folder, Obsidian vault, print or AI chat – without the page address; and a random install number that ties these events together. Addresses that look local, such as localhost, are not sent. The server also records an approximate location – country, region and city – worked out from the IP address of the request. All of these events stop the moment you switch them off in settings. Access to a page itself is granted by your own click and only for that tab.
Does it keep a list of the pages I visit? No. In the usage counters a successful clip leaves only its domain – no path, no query, no title; full addresses are kept only for pages where extraction failed, because a fix cannot be written without them. Separately, the latest clip, with its text and full address, stays in the extension’s local storage so the window can show it again, until the next clip replaces it. The “Clear” button in the “How you use it” section of settings, under the send switch, empties the counters and deletes that clip too.
Add to Chrome (free)Free, no account · tested on 512 pages in August 2026, 0 crashes. Extraction works offline; one switch in settings stops usage events.For Chrome on a computer