What might be the reason that “Paste and Match Style” is Option-Shift-Command-V by default, and not Option-Command-V or Shift-Command-V? Are the second and third shortcuts used for something else? (Not sure, but it seems they are not; it seems they are free.)
Dunno, but we’d have a much better world if the default paste behavior would be Past and match style!
It’s a remnant from the past where things was different. Wish that someone (hopefully Apple) would change that right now!
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My solution to this is to use the Hyper Key + V as paste and match style.
The first step is to setup Hyper Key on your machine. Full details can be found here, Hyper Key Help - Keeping Caps Lock Functionality. This has the effect of making the caps lock key the same as holding down ctrl+shift+cmd+option.
Once this is working I made a keyboard shortcut for all applications. You can see the settings in the screenshot below.
Now I hold down caps lock + V and I have paste and match style by holding two keys down instead of four. Not the most elegant of solutions but it has worked so far. I agree with @carlsson that having paste and match as the default would be better.
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I use a Keyboard Maestro shortcut quite often for this kind of thing, one of the main reasons I use Keyboard Maestro, it isn’t only for high tech and high power users. it is worth it’s cost for that alone. I use a conflict palette: that looks clumsy but in fact it works so fast that once you know it it is as fast as typing a short string. I think one can also make a shortcut work differently by ‘holding down’ a key or not. Then it is just a short muscle memory job.
I used to do that for DEVONthink 3 's workspace shortcuts which that cmnd-shift-option plus a number key. However I have to say I got used to the cluster. I did at one time distribute one such shortcut over both sides of the keyboard and once that was in muscle memory it was easy. It depends where the fourth key is though?
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I use a Typinator snippet triggered by typing vvv to paste the clipboard contents in plain text. This simple snippet can also be created in other text expansion apps, including TextExpander.
I’m also a big fan of the Paste clipboard manager (included with Setapp). You can paste in plain text using Paste by holding down the ⇧ Shift key.
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You’ve just reminded me of the other way I do this. It’s become such a habit I forgot this was something I setup.
In TextExpander I have a snippet called Paste Plain Text. This takes the contents of the clipboard and has the content type set to plain text. When I type the abbreviation ’xpt’ it outputs the clipboard as plain text.
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The Pure Paste app by Sindre Sorhus (free on the Mac App Store) is very handy for that, and has some nice options in the settings.
You can do this within macOS System Settings → Keyboard → App Shortcuts without the need for any 3rd party software. Here, for example, I mapped Pages, Paste to be ⌥F9 to be Paste and ⌘V to be Paste and Match Style. If you don’t remap Paste then there won’t be a keyboard shortcut for it.
You can do this system-wide however keep in mind that not all apps have Paste and Match Style, so it’s best to do this on a per-app basis
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I had previously done this system-wide (configured ⌘V to ‘Paste and Match Style’). IIRC, I then configured ⌥-⇧-⌘-V to regular old paste. This was a mistake. For any app which did not have ‘Paste and Match Style’, ⌘V did nothing and I had to remember to use the awkward ⌥-⇧-⌘-V command. If only we could configure plain Paste as a systemwide fallback for any app which doesn’t support ‘Paste and Match Style’. But, until that’s an option, configuring this per app is the right way to do it.
I switch Paste and Match ⌥-⇧-⌘-V to ⌘V and vice versa on a program by program basis — currently only Scrivener and Numbers — rather than system-wide as, like you, I found ones that did not like the switch; MacVim being one of them. This change is on my checklist of things to do on any new machine.