Joplin Web Clipper

The Web Clipper is a browser extension that allows you to save web pages and screenshots from your browser. To start using it, open the Joplin desktop application, go to the Web Clipper Options and follow the instructions.

Troubleshooting the web clipper service

The web clipper extension and the Joplin application communicates via a service, which is started by the Joplin desktop app.

However certain things can interfer with this service and prevent it from being accessible or from starting. If something does not work, check the following:

Check that the service is started. You can check this in the Web clipper options in the desktop app.
Check that the port used by the service is not blocked by a firewall. You can find the port number in the Web clipper options in the desktop Joplin application.
Check that no proxy is running on the machine, or make sure that the requests from the web clipper service are filtered and allowed. For example https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/issues/561#issuecomment-392220191

If none of this work, please report it on the forum or GitHub issue tracker

Debugging the extension

In Chrome

To provide as much information as possible when reporting an issue, you may provide the log from the various Chrome console.

To do so, first enable developer mode in chrome://extensions/

Debugging the popup: Right-click on the Joplin extension icon, and select "Inspect popup".
Debugging the background script: In chrome://extensions/, click on "Inspect background script".
Debugging the content script: Press Ctrl+Shift+I to open the console of the current page.

In Firefox

Open about:debugging in Firefox.
Make sure the checkox "Enable add-on debugging" is ticked.
Scroll down to the Joplin Web Clipper extension.
Click on "Debugging" - that should open a new console window.

Also press F12 to open the regular Firefox console (some messages from the Joplin extension can go there too).

Now use the extension as normal and replicate the bug you're having.

Copy and paste the content of both the debugging window and the Firefox console, and post it to the forum.

Using the Web Clipper service

The Web Clipper service can be used to create notes from any other application. It exposes a REST API with a number of methods to list folders and to create notes or attach images.

In order to use it, you'll first need to find on which port the service is running. To do so, open the Web Clipper Option in Joplin and if the service is running it should tell you on which port. Normally it runs on port 41184. If you want to find it programmatically, you may follow this kind of algorithm:

let port = null;
for (let portToTest = 41184; portToTest <= 41194; portToTest++) {
    const result = pingPort(portToTest); // Call GET /ping
    if (result == 'JoplinClipperServer') {
        port = portToTest; // Found the port
        break;
    }
}

The following methods are available:

GET /ping

Tells whether the service is active or not. It should return "JoplinClipperServer" if it works.

Example: curl http://127.0.0.1:41184/ping

GET /folders

Returns the list of notebooks (called "folders" internally) as a tree. The sub-notebooks of a notebook, if any, are under the children key.

Example: curl http://127.0.0.1:41184/folders

POST /notes

Creates a new note. You can either specify the note body as Markdown by setting the body parameter, or in HTML by setting the body_html. All parameter are optional.

Parameters:

Key	Description
title	Note title
body	Note body, in Markdown
body_html	Note body, in HTML format
source_url	The URL the note comes from
author	The note author
parent_id	The notebook (ID) to move the note to
base_url	If `body_html` is provided and contains relative URLs, provide the `base_url` parameter too so that all the URLs can be converted to absolute ones. The base URL is basically where the HTML was fetched from, minus the query (everything after the '?'). For example if the original page was `https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=%5Bjava%5D+test`, the base URL is `https://stackoverflow.com/search`.
source_url	The full URL of the page.
image_data_url	An image to attach to the note, in Data URL format.
crop_rect	If an image is provided, you can also specify an optional rectangle that will be used to crop the image. In format `{ x: x, y: y, width: width, height: height }`

Examples:

Create a note from some Markdown text

curl --data '{ "title": "My note", "body": "Some note in **Markdown**"}' http://127.0.0.1:41184/notes

Create a note from some HTML

curl --data '{ "title": "My note", "body_html": "Some note in <b>HTML</b>"}' http://127.0.0.1:41184/notes

Create a note and attach an image to it:

curl --data '{ "title": "Image test", "body": "Here is Joplin icon:", "image_data_url": "data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAgAAAAICAIAAABLbSncAAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAANZJREFUeNoAyAA3/wFwtO3K6gUB/vz2+Prw9fj/+/r+/wBZKAAExOgF4/MC9ff+MRH6Ui4E+/0Bqc/zutj6AgT+/Pz7+vv7++nu82c4DlMqCvLs8goA/gL8/fz09fb59vXa6vzZ6vjT5fbn6voD/fwC8vX4UiT9Zi//APHyAP8ACgUBAPv5APz7BPj2+DIaC2o3E+3o6ywaC5fT6gD6/QD9/QEVf9kD+/dcLQgJA/7v8vqfwOf18wA1IAIEVycAyt//v9XvAPv7APz8LhoIAPz9Ri4OAgwARgx4W/6fVeEAAAAASUVORK5CYII="}' http://127.0.0.1:41184/notes