Slurp vs. Obsidian Web Clipper

[inhumantsar]

Hello Slurpers!

Late last year I discovered a browser extension made by Obsidian to accomplish effectively the same goal as Slurp. In fact my next major update was going to pivot toward using a browser extension and the system's clipboard in exactly the same way.

Apparently though, plenty of people continue to use Slurp despite that. So I wanted to ask: Why? What does Slurp do for you that Obsidian's Web Clipper doesn't?

[TheBestPessimist]

For what is worth, i moved from slurp to clipper, but i'm half dissatisfied with both. Some sites just can't be clipped without much work on the template. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[inhumantsar]

To be completely honest, I personally use Clipper over Slurp now and I feel the same. Neither does the job as well as I'd like. It's largely why I started this discussion thread.

This kind of parsing is a tough problem. Slurp uses Mozilla's Readability to strip the ads and navigation and render it down into a clean HTML doc which Obsidian can then turn into Markdown. I suspect Clipper uses the same method (maybe even the same library) since its results seem to be about on-par with Slurp.

Another comment here said "ChatGPT to the rescue" and honestly, it would probably be more reliable than the current method. I've explored running a tiny deepseek or phi model on devices, but it's not feasible (yet). Letting people bring their own model is an option, but it would impossible to support people with.

I'd love to find a better way. Especially if people want things from Slurp that Clipper can't do. It'd be a lot of work though, taking away time from usability features (like the browser extension).

[berot3]

Some sites just can't be clipped without much work on the template. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AI to the rescue? Imagine slurp lets ChatGPT verify the clippings and adds missing pieces/reformats it/deletes unwanted parts!

[inhumantsar]

That would be nice but not really feasible until we can all run LLMs on bargain laptops and mobile phones. Using an API is possible but I would have a hard time debugging peoples' issues and most people would be turned off by the cost.

[anurag-verma-india]

Well, I didn't know about web clipper when I started using Slurp

[TheBestPessimist]

I want to say clipper is much better as of now, and most of the sites i need to clip work well.
The switch from readability to defuddle (https://github.com/kepano/defuddle) is paying off.

I have not used slurp since my comment above so idk the current functionality, but if it is still using mozilla's readability, then it 100% is subpar to the official Clipper.

[CanRau]

Slurp works (mostly) easily from mobile, even in mobile-browsers that don't support extensions (not even sure the web clipper extension would work in those)