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DOMCopy — Copy Any Element as Text, HTML, or Markdown

After months of building, DOMCopy just passed Google's review and is now live on the Chrome Web Store. Here's what it does and why I built it.

The problem

When I'm reading an article, browsing documentation, or skimming a news page, I often want to grab a specific piece of content — a paragraph, a table, a code snippet — and paste it somewhere. But the existing options are unsatisfying:

  • Copy as plain text loses all structure.
  • Copy as HTML brings along messy styles and navigation chrome.
  • Copy as Markdown requires leaving the page and pasting into a converter, then cleaning up tables and formatting by hand.

None of these let you pick exactly the element you want, quickly, without leaving the page.

What DOMCopy does

DOMCopy is a Chrome extension that adds a lightweight picker to any page. Press Alt+Shift+D (or click the toolbar icon), hover over any element, and copy it in three formats:

  1. Text — clean plain text, ready for notes, docs, or any paste target.
  2. HTML — rich HTML that preserves the element's formatting when pasted into editors.
  3. Markdown (Pro) — tables, lists, and rich content become clean GFM Markdown.

The picker works inside iframes too, so you can grab content from embedded editors, CodePen iframes, or any sandboxed widget. Use the arrow keys to navigate the element tree — parent, sibling, child — and when you find the right node, one hotkey copies it to your clipboard.

Privacy by design

There are no accounts, no tracking, and no server-side processing. Everything happens on your device. What you copy goes to your clipboard and nowhere else.

Pricing

The essentials are free forever — text, HTML, iframe support, and element-tree navigation. Markdown copying is a Pro feature at 3.99/month, with a lifetime option at 29.99.

The Chrome Web Store

DOMCopy is now listed on the Chrome Web Store:

It's listed under the title "DOMCopy — Copy any element as text, HTML, or Markdown". If you're a Chrome user who reads a lot, I'd love for you to give it a try and leave a rating.

What's next

The extension is already usable, but there's more planned. Future Pro features will build on the same architecture — better table handling, richer copy modes, and whatever the community asks for. Check out domcopy.universeroc.com for updates.

If you run into any issues or have feature requests, send an email to [email protected] or leave feedback on the listing page.