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?
Which browsers does it work in? Desktop Chrome only: Clean Web Clipper has not been tested in other browsers or on phones. It is built on Manifest V3, so it will not stop working when the old extension format is switched off.
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. 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 when you download the .md file. The settings page also counts how many times you pressed the button and how many of those produced a note, 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 panel also shows how many addresses have been sent, so what goes out is never out of sight.
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, a ready Markdown preview took 90–820 ms from opening the window; 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 once, 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, images and dates?
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. Merged cells are flattened, because Markdown has no way to express a merge. 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.
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 field stays empty rather than being 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 says so. On storefronts, feeds and search results there is no article to extract, and instead of handing you three hundred link labels the extension writes an extraction: no-article marker and stops. The decision is made by a measured threshold – when more than a quarter of the text sits inside link labels, it is navigation, not prose.
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. The switch at the top of the window always shows which one you are looking at, 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, and what does it keep?
Does it keep a list of the pages I visit? No. A successful clip leaves behind its domain and nothing more – no path, no query, no title, so the list cannot show what you read on a site, only that you clipped there. Full addresses are kept in one case only: pages where extraction failed, because that is the one thing a fix cannot be written without. Everything kept is visible in the panel and can be cleared with one button.
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 where no article could be found, so the site can be taught; 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 it stops the moment you switch it off in settings. Access to a page itself is granted by your own click and only for that tab.
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