I finally have new browser extensions for clipping the web straight into nvALT. Firefox and Zen, Chrome, Brave, and any other Chromium browser, plus Safari. They live at github.com/ttscoff/nvalt-extension, and they are the same idea as the Marked browser extensions, aimed at a note instead of a preview.

Install

Firefox and Zen can install Send to nvALT from the Firefox Add-ons directory.

Chrome, Brave, and other Chromium browsers can install it from the Chrome Web Store.

Safari is bundled with nvALT. Open nvALT once so macOS can register it, then in Safari go to Settings, Extensions, and turn on Send to nvALT. Allow it on the sites you want to clip. If it is missing from the list, quit Safari and open it again.

Same popup as Marked

The popup is the same as the Marked one, but pointed at nvALT. There is a title field, a Readability checkbox, and three ways to send:

  • Markdownify URL sends the address of the current page.
  • Markdownify Selection sends the HTML you have highlighted. The button stays disabled until something is selected.
  • Select Section lets you pick blocks on the page.

The title starts as the page title with the site name stripped off, so “Some Article - The Site” becomes “Some Article”. You can edit it before sending. Readability is remembered, and when it is on, nvALT keeps the article and drops the chrome around it.

Under the buttons are the same zoom controls as Marked: -, Fit Height, and +. Those are there so you can hit a small block without squinting, or pick a huge block witout selecting too much.

Picking blocks

Select Section turns the cursor into a crosshair and outlines whatever block is under the pointer.

Click a block and it goes to nvALT. Hold Command and click to gather several blocks, Command-click again to drop one, then press Return to send the set. Escape backs out and leaves the page alone.

What nvALT does with it

The extension hands the page to nvALT with a nvalt://markdownify link. A whole page goes across as a URL. A selection or a chosen block goes across as HTML, along with the page address so relative links still resolve.

nvalt://markdownify?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fpost&title=Some%20Article&readability=1

nvALT has its own Markdownifier now. It runs HTML2Text and Readability inside the app, the same way Marked does, and it does not shell out to the old Python scripts to do the conversion. The note shows up with the title you sent, ready to edit.