It works for the basics Google Docs today supports Markdown-style headings, bold, italics, strikethrough, links, and lists. You type one thing, and Google replaces it with what you meant-only this time, it’s replacing characters with formatting. Google Docs’ Markdown support today works exactly like every other automatic substitution or smart quote features.

Google Docs turns Markdown into standard rich text formatting Google Docs will then remove the Markdown formatting characters and add the correct standard formatting in their place. Now, in your Google Doc, try adding some Markdown formatting: Add a single hash symbol at the start of a line to start a H1 heading, or add an asterisk before and after a word to italicize it. (It’s still rolling out over the next couple of weeks only one of my three Google accounts showed the option today). Click Preferences in the Tools menu, then check the Automatically detect Markdown option and tap Ok. Google Docs’ new Markdown support comes as a preferences option-and it’s turned off by default. How Google Docs’ Markdown support works Turn on Google Docs' new Markdown feature in Preferences Yet somehow, Google Docs is almost a better Markdown tool if you don’t enable Google’s new Markdown feature. A simple way to format text with text.Īnd now it’s everywhere-including in Google Docs, with a just-released Automatically detect Markdown feature. “It dawned on me: this is madness,” wrote Gruber. Writing blog posts in HTML, copying them into his content management system, only to find a missing HTML tag or miscoded character started getting old. A year before the Writely team released what would become Google Docs, two years before the search giant started building an online office suite, John Gruber wanted a simpler way to write.

Mark text as a heading google docs