If you’re a fan of using Markdown to format your documents, you’ll be happy to know that you can use it in Google Docs. By enabling a simple setting, Docs recognizes Markdown so you can type, format, and continue.
Enable Markdown in Google Docs
In order for Google Docs to recognize Markdown, you need to enable the setting. Go to Google Docs, log in and open your document.
Click on Tools in the menu and select ‘Preferences’.
On the General tab, check the box for Automatically detect Markdown and click “OK”.
Now you are ready to get started with Markdown.
Using Markdown in Google Docs
You can format headings, text, and links with Markdown in Google Docs.
RELATED: What is Markdown and how do you use it?
Create headers
Insert a # (hash) before the corresponding heading level with a space before the text.
- # Cup 1
- ## Cup 2
- ### Heading 3
Formatting text
You can use asterisks, underscores, and hyphens for italics, bold, italics, and bold and strikethrough. For italic and bold text you have two different options.
- Format *italics* with one asterisk on each side and no spaces.
- Format _italics_ with one underscore on each side and no spaces.
- Make this **bold** with two asterisks on each side and no spaces.
- make this __bold__ with two underscores on each side and no spaces.
- For ***italics and bold*** use three asterisks on each side with no spaces.
- For ___italics and bold___ use three underscores on each side with no spaces.
- Format –
strike out– with a hyphen on each side and without spaces.
Add a link
To insert a link, put the link text in parentheses with the URL in parentheses and with no space in between. For example, to link to Mujahid Tricks in the text, write:
Visit [How-to Geek](https://www.howtogeek.com) for details.
Create lists
To have Docs detect when you use Markdown’s list format (numbers for numbered lists, asterisks for bullet points, etc.), go back to Tools > Preferences > General and check the Automatically detect lists box.
If you regularly use Markdown to format your documents, you’ll love this feature in Google Docs.
For more information, see how to format text in superscript or subscript, or how to copy formatting in Google Docs.