Copy the main content of any web page as plain text or Markdown — in one click, fully offline.
Copying an article from a modern page usually drags along navigation, sidebars, ads, cookie banners and other clutter. Copy Content finds the actual article block, strips the noise, and gives you exactly what you wanted — as clean text or formatted Markdown — without ever sending the page anywhere.
Popup with four actions. Right-click context menu offers the same.
- Four actions —
Copy Text,Copy Markdown,Pick Text,Pick Markdown. The first two grab the whole article; the picker variants let you click any element on the page and copy just that part. - Right-click context menu — every action is also available on
page,selectionandframecontexts, no popup needed. - Smart content extraction — looks for
main,article,[role="main"], common content IDs/classes (#content,.entry-content,.post, …) and only falls back to<body>when nothing matches. Removesnav,header,footer,aside, ads, cookie banners andaria-hiddennodes before extracting. - Real Markdown — preserves headings (
#/##/###), bold, italic, links, ordered/unordered lists, tables and fenced code blocks. - Works inside iframes — runs in all frames and picks the longest non-empty result, so embedded readers and frame-based article hosts still work.
- Multilingual UI — English, Spanish, Hindi, Russian (auto-detected from browser locale).
- 100% offline — no network requests, no analytics, no telemetry. The only permissions used are
activeTab,scripting,clipboardWriteandcontextMenus. - Chrome + Firefox — single codebase, MV3 service worker on Chrome and MV3 background scripts on Firefox.
| Browser | Link |
|---|---|
| Chrome / Edge / Brave / Opera | Chrome Web Store |
| Firefox | addons.mozilla.org |
git clone <this-repo> copy-content
cd copy-content
git config core.hooksPath .githooks # enables the version-bump hook (optional)Chrome / Edge / Brave
- Open
chrome://extensions. - Enable Developer mode.
- Click Load unpacked and pick the project folder.
Firefox
- Open
about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox. - Click Load Temporary Add-on… and pick
manifest.json.
Firefox unloads temporary add-ons on restart. For a persistent install, run
node build.mjsand loadcopy-content-firefox.zipviaabout:addons→ ⚙ → Install Add-on From File….
Click the toolbar icon to open the popup, or right-click anywhere on a page to get the same four actions from the context menu:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Copy Text | Extracts the main article and copies it as plain text. |
| Copy Markdown | Same article, but with headings, links, lists, tables and code preserved. |
| Pick Text | Highlights elements as you hover; click to copy that element as plain text. |
| Pick Markdown | Picker mode, but copies the chosen element as Markdown. |
A small toast confirms the result and shows the character count (e.g. Markdown copied · 5.4k chars).
The extension does not make network requests, does not load remote scripts, does not track usage and does not read pages in the background. Extraction runs in the active tab on click and writes the result to the clipboard — that is the entire data flow.
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
activeTab |
Read the DOM of the currently active tab when the user triggers an action. |
scripting |
Inject the extractor into the page so it can run in the page context. |
clipboardWrite |
Write the extracted text/Markdown to the clipboard. |
contextMenus |
Add the four actions to the right-click menu. |
copy-content/
├── manifest.json # MV3 manifest (Chrome-flavoured; build.mjs rewrites for Firefox)
├── background.js # Service worker / background script — context menus, picker
├── popup.html / popup.js # Toolbar popup with the four buttons
├── extractors.js # Page-context functions: extractPageContent, pickElementContent
├── _locales/{en,es,hi,ru}/messages.json
├── icons/ # 16/48/128 px PNGs
├── .githooks/pre-commit # Auto-bumps manifest patch version
└── build.mjs # Packs dist-chrome/ + dist-firefox/ ZIPs
Build store-ready ZIPs
node build.mjs
# → copy-content-chrome.zip
# → copy-content-firefox.zipThe build script keeps a single manifest.json for Chrome (MV3 service worker) and rewrites background to scripts: [...] for Firefox, since Firefox MV3 disables service workers by default.
Auto version-bump hook
After git config core.hooksPath .githooks, every commit increments the patch segment of manifest.json version (e.g. 1.2.8 → 1.2.9). To set a major/minor manually, edit manifest.json and stage it — the hook detects manual version changes and skips the bump.
Locale files live in _locales/<code>/messages.json. Currently shipped:
- English (
en) - Spanish (
es) - Hindi (
hi) - Russian (
ru)
To add a new locale, copy _locales/en/ to _locales/<code>/ and translate the message fields.
Released under the Apache License 2.0 © Timur Bondarenko.