Most of us paste content dozens of times a day without thinking twice about it. The standard Ctrl + V shortcut works well enough for basic tasks, so it is easy to wonder why anyone would bother with a more complex alternative. I felt the same way until I actually explored what PowerToys’ Advanced Paste could do.
Advanced Paste isn’t just another clipboard manager. It transforms your copied content before it hits the page. It strips formatting, converts structures, and can even rewrite text using local AI. If you’ve ever pasted something from a website and spent the next minute fixing the formatting, this tool eliminates that. You can access the feature by installing Microsoft’s free PowerToys suite, but it rarely gets the attention it deserves.
- OS
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Windows
- Developer
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Microsoft Corporation
- Pricing model
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Free, Open-source
The local AI feature rewrites your clipboard content
While your clipboard data stays on your machine
The AI integration in Advanced Paste is genuinely useful. You can enter natural language instructions to transform your clipboard content however you want. You can tell it to summarize a long paragraph, fix grammar, or convert a block of text into bullet points. Just tell it what to do.
To use this feature, you’ll need to enable it first:
- Open PowerToys Settings and navigate to Advanced Paste in the sidebar.
- Toggle Enable Advanced Paste if it isn’t already on.
- Also, turn on the toggle next to Enable Paste with AI.
- Choose your AI provider — either a local model or an OpenAI API key if you prefer cloud processing.
- Press Win + Shift + V to open Advanced Paste, then type your instructions in the prompt field.
The prompt field accepts plain English commands. I find it particularly useful for fixing poorly written text or converting rambling notes into something coherent. Some prompts I use regularly are:
- Convert to bullet points.
- Fix grammar and spelling.
- Make this more concise.
- Rewrite in a casual tone.
The local AI option requires compatible hardware, specifically, a machine that can run small language models (SLMs) efficiently. If your PC can’t handle local inference, you can fall back to OpenAI’s API, though that means your clipboard content will leave your device.
Custom actions let you build personalized workflows
Save your favorite prompts for one-click access
The built-in options cover common use cases, but your workflow probably has specific needs that generic presets can’t address. In that case, custom actions let you save your own AI prompts and access them directly from the Advanced Paste menu. Instead of typing the same instruction repeatedly, you create it once and reuse it indefinitely. If you frequently reformat meeting notes, convert technical jargon for non-technical readers, or restructure emails in a specific way, those can all become one-click operations.
The prompt you write determines everything; therefore, be direct, as vague instructions lead to inconsistent results. Instead of “make this better,” try “rewrite this email to be polite but firm, and keep it under 100 words.” The more precise your prompt, the more reliable the output.
The following are some custom actions worth considering:
- Extract action items from this text and list them.
- Rewrite for a fifth-grade reading level.
- Turn this into a Slack message — brief and casual.
Once saved, your custom actions appear alongside the default options in the Advanced Paste menu. You can build a small library tailored to exactly how you work.
Format conversions save you from manual cleanup
No more pasting into Notepad first
Copying text from a webpage and pasting it into a document is often a disaster when you get random fonts, weird spacing, and background colors that shouldn’t exist. The classic workaround is to paste into Notepad first to strip formatting — it works, but it’s an extra step that adds up when you do it repeatedly. If you’ve been relying on third-party Windows clipboard managers, Advanced Paste might replace some of that functionality as it has built-in format conversions.
“Paste as plain text” strips everything and gives you clean, unformatted text. The Markdown conversion is handy for developers — headings become hashtags, bold text gets asterisks, and lists format correctly. The JSON option targets a more technical audience working with structured data or API requests.
You can access these conversions in the Advanced Paste window. Just copy your content as usual with Ctrl + C and press Win + Shift + V to open Advanced Paste. Then select your desired format from the menu, such as Plain text, Markdown, or JSON.
Direct keyboard shortcuts for your most-used actions
Opening the Advanced Paste menu works fine, but it’s still an extra step. If you frequently use certain transformations, assigning direct keyboard shortcuts lets you bypass the menu altogether. One keystroke, instant result.
PowerToys lets you assign shortcuts to both built-in formats and your custom actions. The key is to choose combinations that won’t conflict with the apps you use daily. Here are some suggestions:
Action | Suggested shortcut |
|---|---|
Paste as plain text | Win + Ctrl + V |
Paste as Markdown | Win + Ctrl + M |
Paste as JSON | Win + Ctrl + J |
Open AI prompt field | Win + Shift + V (default) |
Custom action 1/2/3 | Win + Alt + 1/2/3 |
The Win + Alt combinations work well for custom actions because they usually don’t conflict with other software. However, if they conflict with the software you use, you can remap Caps Lock to a hyper key and use it in combination with other keys. You can assign several custom actions this way — enough for most workflows without cluttering your muscle memory.
Advanced Paste handles clipboard tasks efficiently, but it’s one module in a much larger toolkit. PowerToys makes File Explorer so much better and includes utilities such as FancyZones for window management, PowerRename for batch file renaming, and Text Extractor for pulling text from images. If Advanced Paste fits your workflow, the rest of the suite offers something useful as well.
