Using the browser clipper

Some retailer sites actively block Mortar's automatic scraper — Cloudflare-style bot walls, login-gated trade portals, regional pricing pages. The browser clipper is the workaround: it captures the page you're already looking at, in your own browser, and sends it straight to Mortar.

Install it

1. Go to Settings → Clipper.
2. Drag the "Add to Mortar" button into your browser's bookmarks bar. (This is the entire install step — it's a bookmarklet, not a browser extension, so there's nothing to approve from a web store.)

The clipper is generated per-environment, so install it from whichever version of Mortar you're actually using.

Clip a product

1. Browse to any product page you want to add — including ones Mortar's regular scraper can't reach, like a trade-only login area.
2. Click the Add to Mortar bookmark. A small popup window opens with the page already captured.
3. If you're not signed in, you'll be prompted to sign in first — then click the bookmark again on the product page.
4. In the popup, choose the Project and Room to add it to, set a Quantity, and click Add to Mortar.
5. The popup adds it instantly and goes straight back to "ready for the next product" — you don't have to wait for Mortar to finish reading the page before clipping another.

Clipping several items in a row

The popup keeps a running list of everything you've clipped this session, right below the form:

• Click the bookmark again on a new product page as soon as you're ready — you don't need to wait for the previous clip to finish. Each one queues up and shows its own row: Adding…, then Scraping…, then Added (with the item's name, photo, and price) once Mortar has read the page — or Needs attention if something went wrong with that one.
• Click an Added row to open that item in Mortar, in a new tab.
• You can close the popup at any time — anything still "Scraping…" keeps processing on Mortar's side and lands in the room regardless; closing the window just means you won't see the rest of the list finish.
• The list only lasts for the current popup session — reopening the clipper later (or on a different tab) starts a fresh, empty list.

Limits

• Captured pages are capped at 2 MB of page HTML. On the rare oversized page, the popup will tell you it's too large — add that item by pasting its URL into the room's Add Item form instead.
• Every clip counts against your plan's monthly scrape allowance, the same as a regular paste-a-URL scrape.
• If Mortar can't extract a clean product from the captured page, the item is still created as a draft with the page's URL attached, so you can fill in the details by hand rather than losing the capture entirely.

FAQ

Do I need to install a browser extension? No — it's a bookmarklet (a bookmark that runs a small script), so there's nothing to install from a web store and nothing that needs updating.

Will this work on a trade portal I have to log into? Yes — that's the main reason it exists. The clipper captures the page from your own logged-in browser session, which is something the server-side scraper can never do.

Why does it open in a small popup instead of a new tab? It's designed as a lightweight capture window, not a full page — you're meant to glance at it, pick a project/room, and close it.