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No Markdown support in Google Drive after all these years
Why does Google not (want to?) support the full Markdown experience in Google Drive? I'm not talking about the limited, mostly useless support in Docs, but supporting opening, reading / editing real (.MD extension) files. Just, why?
- Zetobal 3y agoNobody gets promoted over supporting open source standards at google anymore... well except maybe in some parts of their backend.
- ggm 3y agoI don't think they'd actually remove the functionality of it was added but I bet adding it would be an uphill struggle
- thorncorona 3y agoPhrase it the other way, why would they want to support a markdown editor in google drive?
- adrianvoica 3y agoI think lots of people would keep their (plain text markdown) notes in Drive instead of using yet another tool / app / service for that. Besides, having unencrypted text files at your disposal (for... I don't know... peeking into?) would be an absolute win.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoThere's already Google Keep for notes.
- adrianvoica 3y agoI use that since day one, I love it as a product. But still, this is not about notes, it's about supporting a simple, text-based file format.
- layer8 3y agoUnencrypted would rather be a loss for data privacy.
- adrianvoica 3y agoBesides the pure textual representation of such files (.md, .txt), you still have the same problem for any (natively) supported Docs file format. It is, somehow, in the user's own option to use Drive as a repo for ultra-sensitive info or avoid it (but, unfortunately, this informed opinion applies more often to the more tech-savvy people).
- indymike 3y agoActually, Google drive does work with Markdown. I store markdown there all the time. (after all markdown is just text)
- RadiozRadioz 3y agoSimple: if you make your documents in Markdown, you won't be making them in Google Docs. Stuff made in Google Docs is sticky, increases your dependence on Google, and importantly has a valuable network effect due to their collaboration features. It is in Google's best interest to encourage you to rely on their proprietary services instead of offering you alternatives that allow you to switch provider easily. Additionally, the "people who know what Markdown is but also like trusting Google with their files" demographic is vanishingly small and not who Drive is targeting at all.
- e40 3y agoAgree completely with the first paragraph and disagree completely with the second paragraph. There are lots of us who use Google drive at work that love md.
- afavour 3y agoI’m a developer working at a company that uses GSuite. My personal feelings about trusting Google aren’t really relevant, I’d love to use Markdown in GDoc, as would many of my coworkers!
- m-p-3 3y agoI'd be happy if only they supported the CommonMark format properly in GChat..
- moffkalast 3y agoThere are dozens of you.
- IshKebab 3y agoOutside of HN, people that actually avoid giving Google any data are almost nonexistent. People that use Markdown definitely aren't. There's a huge number of pragmatic developers that use Markdown and Google.
- scrollaway 3y agoGoogle Drive is a perfect example of today's Google. "Good enough -- just barely". It could be a very fast, efficient file browser with lots of format previews. It's not. Doing basic "file manager" things such as viewing/extracting files from a .zip, editing a plain-text file, or viewing markdown… all those are just "too complicated" for a small indie company like Google. Drive is incredibly powerful, and yet it's just awful compared to what it could be. If someone one day makes a "better web UI" for Drive with better functionality, but that still uses google drive in the backend, damn I want in.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jxdxbx 3y agoDrive totally chokes if you have tons of tiny files. Lots of things do but Drive is the worst I have seen. I unwisely tried to put a full MAME set on Drive once, and then deleted it. The files never got “deleted” but rather were still in my drive, but not associated with any particular folder, so I could search for them but not see them any other way. Another time, lots of files ended up in Trash, but Drive was unable to ever actually empty the trash. One thing that bites me every few months is that on iOS, the Google Drive file provider extension does not support basic operations. Like I think I have tried to just save a file to Google Drive via Files and it never uploaded. It’s not just that this stuff works with iCloud Drive, but also with Dropbox, Box, and even SFTP shares mounted via Secure Shellfish.
- scrollaway 3y agoIndeed. The web UI is awful at this. If you look at the devtools when you select many files, you can see that there's one synchronous web request per file.
- esprehn 3y agoIt's not synchronous, sync xhr on the web is pretty rare these days.
- jxdxbx 3y agoI’d frame it more as just text files…I can edit Word documents (as Word documents, not converted) that are stored on Google Drive, in Google Docs. One that feature was added, support for plain text should have been added as well. That being said Google Doc’s support for Word documents is confusing as hell. I wish at least it was made to be more visually distinct since people (such as: me) get confused all the time between editing a Google Doc, a Word document converted to Google Docs (where now there are likely two branched versions of the same document), and just using the Google Docs interface to edit a Word document directly.
- mrweasel 3y agoWhy should they? For your use-case, and mine, sure by all means add it. For the average user: "Why is Google Drive showing my text big a bigger font when I start a line with #" There's zero benefit for them to add it, and the majority of people who want markdown probably aren't using Google Drive to render their documents.
- adrianvoica 3y agoProbably so. I agree. From a simple UX/UI perspective, there's the "+" button (for creating new Drive items), so, adding "New Markdown Document" or "New Text Document" would bring some clarity. But still... that broad majority is probably using the service in a totally different way.
- modeless 3y agoThey have a whole app store for Google Drive. There are markdown editors in there as well as plenty of other niche things. https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2500820 https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2500820
- adrianvoica 3y agoSure, if you are trusting 3rd party access to your data. Yet another layer of trust for a (niche) service that might just vanish into thin air. No, thank you.
- adrianvoica 3y agoIt's not like Markdown is some rare, unheard of format. I think it's the most used file format for technical docs / content / notes these days, and it's here to stay (because it's simple, it's easy and it's portable). Besides, most well-known note-taking services and apps are based on Markdown, or they export losslessly to Markdown.
- rchaud 3y ago> I think it's the most used file format for technical docs / content / notes That's why Atlassian supports MD for Jira and Confluence. Google Docs is first and foremost a Word Online competitor.
- z3t4 3y agoThere are probably 1000 markdown editors out there ranging from a simple textarea that only lets you write text, to Emacs, and something like Msword on steroids. The nice thing about an open market is that when you no longer like a product you can just switch to another one. I however understand your issue with privacy as any app can just steal your content without you knowing. The solution for privacy is to sandbox/jail the app into an environment where it can just access a limited set of resources, for example you can use an apparmor profile where the app can just access a special folder, and disable all networking. That special folder could be your google drive mount.
- stewbrew 3y agoGet yourself an old-fashioned web-space, setup a nextcloud instance ... profit.
- adrianvoica 3y agoAlready using a Synolgy DSM server - and it's a great experience - but, most (the rest) of the world is running on Google services, this is the reality, so, when it comes to sharing and collaboration capabilities, you're kinda stuck on the outside. I don't really like spreading too thin by using a ton of (more or less overlapping) services instead of using just one (Drive).
- h_mirin 3y agoEven in 2021, Google Workspace had more than 3 billion users. I believe that 99% of these individuals had no clue what Markdown was. If they had, perhaps third-party apps that can connect to Google Drive, such as StackEdit, would be much more popular now.
- mazugrin2 3y agoNor for simple text files.
- xnx 3y agoGoogle Drive doesn't directly support editing of text files either.
- z3t4 3y agoYou just open a markdown editor, that has built in Google Drive support. And edit from there.
- adrianvoica 3y agoYou are missing the point. I am spending most of my day inside VS Code, using it for writing Markdown content as well. Apples to oranges. I don't want the author of some 3rd party obscure app looking at my content without my consent. I don't say I trust Google 100%, but I trust Google more than 3rd parties that I know nothing about.
- z3t4 3y agoAlso see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36466406#36467459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36466406#36467459 Why do you trust Google and Microsoft, companies known to spy on their users, rather then some small company who would go under if someone found out they spied on their users? I'm not saying everyone that's using Google or Microsoft are stupid, I'm trying to understand why people trust Google and Microsoft, is it because so many are already using them, or is it that you have been using them for a long time because you had no other choice ?
- oofnik 3y agoMarkdown is a markup language. Google Docs is a WYSIWYG document editor. These are two fundamentally different approaches to the creation of written content. This question is kind of like asking why you can't edit Illustrator projects in Photoshop.
- adrianvoica 3y agoThis was not about Google Docs at all, but about Google Drive. As anybody knows, you can let 3rd party apps do extra stuff with your Drive content, but the point is: why not natively support Markdown inside Drive. Besides, text content is also content.
- frithsun 3y agoI rented to a meth addict once upon a time. After we finally evicted him, the house was strewn with several ambitious but abandoned projects. Almost as bad as Google.
- wfhBrian 3y agoAnd no support for collapsing/folding text under headings...
- angelmm 3y agoMaybe they’re planning to shutdown Google Drive as it is and focus more on the “Office suite” experience. More oriented towards business case, and MD is not a priority for this at all.
- gordian-not 3y agoIf we're already there, what about SVG support in slides?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoWhich Markdown flavor would they support? My issue with Markdown is that is at least a half dozen different ways of rendering Markdown.
- adrianvoica 3y agoAt least the default, non-opinionated flavor, without the tables and math formula support and stuff like that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- andyp-kw 3y agoI'm still waiting for the Google Drive app for Linux.
- uguuo_o 3y agoEven emacs has a markdown mode: https://jblevins.org/projects/markdown-mode/ https://jblevins.org/projects/markdown-mode/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pjmlp 3y agoWell, why should they? I find more critical that for all the dependecy on COM, the IDL editing experience in Visual Studio still sucks after about 30 years, and is basically like editing bare bones text files.
- bemusedthrow75 3y agoWhat, specifically, is "the full Markdown experience"? Both figuratively and literally.
- bschwindHN 3y agoI dunno, why can't I add a WebP image to a google slides presentation?
- bsmth 3y agoI presume you're looking to add a .md file and have editor / docs support, but there is this in case anyone is looking to write a limited subset of markdown in a Google doc: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12014036?hl=en https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12014036?hl=en It's not great, but you'll find it useful if you have the muscle memory of `* thing` for bullet lists and `## My section` for headings.
- nunez 3y agoMy guess is that the engineering required to turn Markdown into Docs/Sheets/Slides files is more expensive than the increased engagement that Google would get from doing this.
- OhNoNotAgain_99 3y ago[dead]
- nailer 3y agoNo SVG support in Slides either. Adding a video sometimes takes hours. Google products are low-end adware.
- lopkeny12ko 3y agoWhy store markdown files in Google Drive of all places and not a git repository? Google Drive, to me, is object storage with a consumer-friendly user interface. It does not sound like the right place for constantly-changing text files for which you'd want revision history and commit-oriented editing.
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago> Why store markdown files in Google Drive of all places and not a git repository? Git diffing doesn't play nice with paragraph-based prose.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoDoes it not? All of our docs are Markdown files maintained in GitHub and diffs have never been an issue. PRs in particular are great for collaborative updates because reviewers can jump straight to the paragraphs that changed instead of reading everything top to bottom.
- BeFlatXIII 3y agoHow do you handle text wrapping or otherwise manage long paragraphs? Do you use a newline per sentence or use soft-wrapping to write each paragraph on a single line?
- spondylosaurus 3y agoI thiiiink soft wrapping, but I'm not at my computer to verify.
- vel0city 3y agoLive collaboration is a radically different experience than pushing branches. Pros and cons to each, really depends on what you're wanting with a given document.
- pickingdinner 3y agoThey've marginalized "the offering" as a hybrid office/consumer product with a fragmented vision, as shown by their uninspired rebranding/marketing efforts. Google Cloud could just create their project folders in drive, let drive open the code editors, and let you do all your coding from there, but that team knows how bad the UI is, and this team is excused because they're the "office/consumer" offering. Both are paid to make separate UX, neither trusts the other, and it's categorical, so not even a conflict. Except, then there's the user that is forced to be incompatible members of two categories when they're not. In an ideal googleverse, you'd login to chrome and it'd have everything. It would be one service, metered by resource consumption, and you'd never have to leave any single window opened for a purpose, to get that "computational" thing done.
- js2 3y agoNot sure about other platforms, but on macOS, copy/paste includes style information. So I write my document in Markdown in my preferred editor, preview it with Marked 2, copy from Marked 2, paste into my Chrome window. Works except for images which cause the Chrome window to spin forever with "Document offline."
- gareth_untether 3y agoSolution: use Obsidian and save in Drive.
- pdntspa 3y agoYou have a whole-ass computer that can run software made to read Markdown, what do you need Google Drive for? Adjust your workflow, the tools exist.
- phantomathkg 3y agoI would imagine the author is asking a question from a company where Google Workspace is the default tool, and would like to produce document that can be shared with others in Google Drive?
- pdntspa 3y agoYou can mount Drive to a drive or mountpoint and edit it with a local tool. You can style the document in some other form of markup. You can use the tools given to produce the result you want. It strikes me as modern cargo-culting to expect cloud providers like Google to cater to niche crowds. We already know they don't care very much about the long tail. If Drive isn't supporting markdown, it's pretty obvious by now that it is not a priority for them. And the tone of the title on here is pretty damn presumptuous. It's like new gamers complaining that some new game doesn't come with photo mode, cloud save, 100% customizable clothing, etc, all these optional things that used to be ancillary but are now somehow a requirement.
- pixelmonkey 3y agoIt's definitely a workaround, but I use a Chrome extension to work around this a bit. I use "Markdown Here" to add a "turn Markdown text into rich formatted text" button to my Chrome bar: https://markdown-here.com/ https://markdown-here.com/ And then I use it on plain Markdown text in a GMail compose window. The rich formatted output it produces is useful for sending richly-formatted GMail messages, but it can also be copy-pasted into a Google Doc (e.g. via https://docs.new https://docs.new), and it comes out really nicely, including support for headers, sub-headers, links, code blocks, and the rest. The main issue is that this is a one-way process, but so long as you keep the .md source files somewhere else, this trick lets you share a richly-formatted doc with others for final commenting/editing/etc. in the GDocs interface.
- theptip 3y agoA lot of people making strategic arguments like “it’s for lock-in”. I don’t buy it; they ship features so slowly that even obvious basic product features to copy from Notion like infinite-scrolling pages only shipped last year IIRC. They have a huge backlog of features that are catch-up to a strategically threatening disruptive competitor, and they can’t deliver those. Markdown support is below all that in priority.