Blogs and word processors “prettify” code: quotes turn curly, --flags become –flags, and spaces become non-breaking. The result looks right but won’t run. Paste the snippet to get code your terminal and compiler will accept.
For snippets copied from blogs, docs or AI: curly quotes, broken dashes, non-breaking spaces and fences fixed. Indentation untouched.
Paste
Paste anything.
Press CtrlV anywhere on this page, drop a text file, or try an example:
Clean
1 Paste text on the left
2 See what’s hiding in the X-ray
3 Copy it back, clean
Fixes16 rules on · 0 changes made
Hidden characters
AI & markdown
Typography
Layout & spacing
Keyboard: Ctrl+Enter copies the clean text, Ctrl+Shift+Enter copies rich text, keys 1 to 6 switch presets, X toggles the X-ray.
Common errors this fixes
Error
Cause
Fix
SyntaxError: Invalid character / illegal character '\u201c'
Curly quotes “ ” ‘ ’
Straight quotes " '
error: unknown option '–save'
WordPress turned -- into an en dash
--save
IndentationError / unexpected token
Non-breaking spaces (U+00A0) in indentation
Normal spaces
Mysterious failures on a line that looks fine
Zero-width space or BOM
Removed
A stray ```bash line at the top | Code fences copied from an AI chat | Removed
What it leaves alone
Indentation: tabs and leading spaces are preserved exactly (non-breaking spaces become normal spaces of the same width).
Comments: # and // lines are kept. Unlike some cleaners, ClepBoard never deletes comments, shebangs or #include lines.
Blank lines and spacing inside your code.
FAQ
Why do curly quotes break my code?
Programming languages only accept straight quotes (" and '). Curly quotes are different Unicode characters, so compilers and shells reject them or treat them as part of the text.
Will it change strings that are supposed to contain curly quotes?
Yes, the Code preset straightens all quotes. If your code intentionally contains typographic quotes, untick "Smart quotes" under Fixes.