A messy ASCII table and wrapped text copied straight out of a terminal

Stop hand-fixing terminal output. Paste-ready tables in one pass.

Clean text by hand a few times a day? That's dozens of hours a year. PipeCleaner strips the junk and hands back readable text and tables the moment you paste.

Download on the Mac App Store

Launch month | 50% off $19.99 $9.99 one-time

macOS 15+ · No subscription · Zero network connections
PipeCleaner showing a messy ASCII table as input on the left and a clean, aligned table as output on the right, with an Auto-Clean toggle at the top.

The moment it's built for

You copy a query result out of terminal, paste it into Teams, and it lands as a jumble of pipes, dashes, and misaligned columns. You paste AI output into a doc and spend two minutes deleting em-dashes and smart quotes. You grab a log snippet for a bug report and it's wrapped in ANSI color codes and timestamp noise.

Do that a handful of times a day and it's dozens of hours a year spent reformatting text by hand.

I'm Dan. I got so sick of cleaning that up by hand that I built PipeCleaner to do it instantly, now I use it every single day.

Every transform runs locally on your Mac. PipeCleaner makes zero network connections. No analytics, no telemetry, no cloud.

Watch it work

Sixty seconds, start to clean

See a messy terminal dump go in and paste-ready text come out.

What it does

Every transform is a toggle with a live side-by-side preview. Use exactly the set you need.

Fixes broken tables

Detects ASCII tables from psql, MySQL, Docker, and friends — and reformats them as Markdown, CSV, TSV, JSON, LaTeX, or clean Word/Pages-ready tables. Wrapped rows get merged back together.

Strips terminal noise

ANSI color codes, shell prompts, log prefixes, box-drawing decorations, stray pipes, and line numbers | gone in one pass.

Tidies AI output

Replaces em-dashes and smart quotes, converts box callouts, unescapes quotes, and normalizes whitespace so pasted LLM text reads like you wrote it.

Cleans on your terms

Every transform is a toggle with a live side-by-side preview. Sort lines, remove duplicates, strip HTML, format JSON, trim trailing whitespace — use exactly the set you need.

Auto-Clean from the menu bar

Flip one switch and text copied from Terminal, iTerm2, Ghostty, Warp, or VS Code is cleaned the moment it hits your clipboard. One-click undo if it ever touches something it shouldn't.

Nothing leaves your Mac

Zero network connections. No analytics, no telemetry, no cloud, every transform runs locally. No third-party SDKs at all.

See it work

One messy table, every format you need

Paste a wrapped ASCII table and copy it back out as Markdown, a spreadsheet, or a word-processor table — whatever the destination wants.

A messy ASCII table reformatted into a clean Markdown table
MarkdownDrop it straight into Teams, Notion, GitHub, or a README as a real Markdown table.
A messy ASCII table converted to a spreadsheet in Excel or Numbers
Excel & NumbersPaste rows and columns that land as real cells, ready to sort and total.
A messy ASCII table turned into a formatted table in Word or Pages
Word & PagesGet a clean, formatted table instead of a monospaced block of pipes.
The PipeCleaner menu bar dropdown with the Auto-Clean toggle and a running count of cleanups
Auto-Clean in the menu barFlip one switch and terminal copies are cleaned the instant you copy them — with a running count.
How it works

However you work, there's a zero-friction path

Pick the one that fits how you already move text around — or use all five.

The window

Paste on the left, copy the cleaned result on the right. The preview updates as you type or flip a toggle.

Auto-Clean from the menu bar

Flip one switch and text copied from Terminal, iTerm2, Ghostty, Warp, or VS Code is cleaned the moment it hits your clipboard. One-click undo if it ever touches something it shouldn't.

The CLI

claude -p 'explain' | pipecleaner sends cleaned output straight to your clipboard. Settings → CLI gives you a copy-paste install command (no sudo).

The Services menu

Select text in any app, right-click, and choose "Clean with PipeCleaner."

Shortcuts

"Clean Text" and "Clean Clipboard" actions for your own automations.

Why you'll want this

table_chart
Paste real tables

Drop query results into Teams, Notion, or GitHub as proper Markdown tables. No more wall of misaligned pipes.

bug_report
File cleaner bug reports

Turn ANSI-soaked log excerpts into readable text before they land in an issue.

smart_toy
Make AI text paste-ready

Strip em-dashes, smart quotes, and box callouts so LLM output reads like you wrote it.

terminal
Live in the terminal

Pipe straight from psql, logs, or your AI CLI to a clean clipboard. No hand-fixing, no detours.

Built by a developer who got tired of hand-fixing every table pasted into Teams and GitHub. I use it every day.

cloud_off Zero network connections
·
block No analytics or telemetry
·
laptop_mac Every transform runs locally
·
extension_off No third-party SDKs

Sandboxed Mac App Store app with zero network entitlement. Don't take our word for it, check Activity Monitor or Little Snitch.

Frequently asked questions

What if Auto-Clean touches something it shouldn't? +
Two safety nets are always on. Auto-Clean applies only a conservative, line-preserving subset of transforms. It never collapses newlines or restructures text in the background,and the original is one click away under Undo Last Auto-Clean in the menu bar. (One honest edge case: macOS can’t tell VS Code’s integrated terminal from its editor, so when VS Code is frontmost, Auto-Clean treats all of its copies as terminal output. The conservative subset and the undo are exactly why that stays safe. If you’d rather, leave Auto-Clean off for specifc applications and use the window, Services menu, or CLI as needed.)
What if I don't like it? +
Apple refunds you, no questions asked. Every Mac App Store purchase is covered by Apple’s standard refund policy. And there’s no subscription to cancel: it’s a one-time purchase, so the worst case is you’re out a few dollars for a few minutes.
Is it a subscription? +
No. One payment on the Mac App Store, all features unlocked, yours forever. No recurring charges, no premium tier, no features held back. It’s $9.99 for the launch, half off the regular $19.99, then it goes back up.
Is my clipboard data private? +
Completely. PipeCleaner is a sandboxed Mac App Store app with zero network entitlement — it literally can’t phone home, and you can confirm it yourself in Activity Monitor. No analytics, no telemetry, no cloud, no third-party SDKs. Every text transform runs locally on your Mac.
What macOS version is required? +
macOS 15.0 or later. Built in Swift with native system APIs, and runs on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.
Will there be a Windows version? +
Yes — a Windows version of PipeCleaner is in the works and planned to ship later in 2026. The Mac version is available now on the Mac App Store.
Something not working the way you expect? +
The full troubleshooting guide;Auto-Clean, tables, the CLI, and the Services menu lives on the Support page. Or email [email protected] and I’ll sort it out, usually within 24 hours.
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Never hand-clean a paste again

Launch month | 50% off | $9.99 today, half off the regular $19.99. Pay once, own it forever, no subscription. Don't love it? Apple refunds you, no questions asked.

Download on the Mac App Store