Web clippers

The best Markdown web clippers for Chrome in 2026

Updated October 14, 2026 · 5 min read

A Markdown web clipper does one thing: it turns the page you are reading into Markdown you can keep. The differences show up after a few weeks of use: where the file goes, what happens to images, and what the clipper does on a page that is not an article. The six Markdown web clippers below are all maintained and installable in Chrome today.

One disclosure first: we make Markforge, one of the six. The store figures are public and dated so you can check them.

The six clippers at a glance

Figures read on the Chrome Web Store on October 14, 2026.

Extension	Users	Rating	Last update	Saves to	Images saved locally
Obsidian Web Clipper	1,000,000	4.8	July 22, 2026	Obsidian vault	No
Joplin Web Clipper	90,000	4.2	August 15, 2024	Joplin	Yes
MarkSnip	30,000	4.9	September 30, 2026	`.md` file, clipboard, Obsidian	Yes
Modern MarkDownload	4,000	4.4	January 20, 2026	`.md` file, clipboard	Yes
Markie	333	5.0	March 10, 2026	Clipboard	No
Markforge	New	No ratings yet	February 19, 2026	`.md` file, clipboard	Yes

MarkDownload, long the default answer to this question, is absent because it no longer installs in Chrome. The story is in our guide to MarkDownload alternatives.

The short version

Best for Obsidian users: Obsidian Web Clipper.
Best general-purpose clipper to plain files: MarkSnip.
Best for threads, discussions and AI conversations: Markforge.
Best for Joplin users: Joplin Web Clipper.
Closest to the old MarkDownload: Modern MarkDownload.
Lightest way to paste a page into an LLM: Markie.

Obsidian Web Clipper

The official extension, and by far the most used. It offers templates with variables, filters and logic, a highlighter, a reader mode, and an interpreter that applies natural-language prompts to a page. It is open source and available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge.

Two things to know. It writes to an Obsidian vault and nothing else, so it is no help if your notes live in another app or in a repo. And it does not download images: a clipped note keeps links to the original site, and you run a separate Obsidian command to pull them in. That workflow, and where it fails, is covered in how to save images locally with Obsidian Web Clipper.

Pick it if everything you clip goes into Obsidian and you like tuning templates.

MarkSnip

The most complete clipper that produces plain Markdown files. Its listing describes article extraction with Mozilla's Readability, GitHub Flavored Markdown output including tables, LaTeX for math, a live preview with word and token counts, per-site rules, a local library of clips, and batch export of several tabs or a list of URLs. Images can be downloaded, embedded as base64 or written as Obsidian wikilinks.

It is the natural successor to MarkDownload for people who clip articles and documentation.

Pick it if you want one capable clipper for articles and docs, with files you control.

Joplin Web Clipper

The companion extension to the Joplin note app. It captures pages and screenshots and sends them to Joplin, images included. The Chrome version was last updated in August 2024, the oldest date in this list.

Pick it if Joplin is where your notes live. Otherwise it has no role.

Modern MarkDownload

A Manifest V3 port of MarkDownload that stays close to the original: popup, options page, Markdown file. Its store description is a single sentence, which sums up the philosophy.

Pick it if you want your old MarkDownload habits back with the fewest changes.

Markie

A one-button extension: click, and the page is on your clipboard as Markdown. It asks for three permissions and saves no files.

Pick it if your only goal is pasting a page into a chat with an LLM.

Markforge

Markforge is ours. On an ordinary article it does less than MarkSnip: no batch export, no local library, and tables are flattened to text in version 1.0.0.

What it does differently is treat certain sites as what they are. A generic clipper looks for the article on a page. A Reddit thread, an X thread or a ChatGPT conversation has no article, so the result is often a fragment or a jumble. Markforge ships a dedicated parser for 17 platforms:

AI assistants: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, exported as a transcript with User and Assistant turns.
Discussions: Reddit with optional comments, Hacker News, Stack Overflow with optional full answers, X threads with optional replies.
Writing platforms: Substack, Medium, LinkedIn, X articles.
Research and reference: arXiv, ResearchGate, Wikipedia.
Developer and work tools: GitHub READMEs and source files, Gmail threads, Google search results.

Markdown exports share one YAML frontmatter template, images can be saved next to the note, and the output folder can be anywhere, including inside a vault.

Pick it if much of what you save is threads, discussions and AI chats. Our step-by-step guides start with exporting a Claude conversation to Markdown and saving AI conversations to Obsidian.

How to choose in two questions

Where should the result live? If the answer is one specific app, use that app's clipper: Obsidian Web Clipper or Joplin Web Clipper. If the answer is "a folder of files", look at MarkSnip, Modern MarkDownload and Markforge. If it is "my clipboard, for thirty seconds", Markie is enough.

What do you clip most? Articles and documentation are what generic clippers are built for, and MarkSnip is the strongest of them. For conversations and threads, a site-aware parser matters more than any other feature.

Running two clippers side by side is common and costs nothing. An article clipper and Markforge cover different pages, so they rarely overlap.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best Markdown web clipper for Obsidian?

Obsidian Web Clipper, the official extension. It has templates, highlights and a reader mode, runs on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge, and counted one million users on the Chrome Web Store in October 2026. Its main gap is that it leaves images as remote links.

Which Markdown web clipper replaces MarkDownload?

MarkSnip is the most complete successor, with 30,000 users and an update on September 30, 2026. Modern MarkDownload is a lighter port that stays close to the original. Both run on Manifest V3, which the original MarkDownload never adopted.

Which clipper works best for Reddit threads, X threads and AI chats?

Generic clippers look for an article on the page, which works poorly on threads and chat interfaces. Markforge has a dedicated parser for each of those sites, so it keeps the structure: who said what, in which order, with replies or comments if you want them.

Do these extensions send my pages to a server?

Markforge converts pages in the browser and has no server. For the others, read the privacy disclosure on each store page before clipping anything sensitive. Features that call an AI model, such as Obsidian Web Clipper's interpreter, send content to the model provider you configure.