Markdown setting not working at all
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Sometime in the last few weeks, all my notes are showing Markdown, regardless of whether I have Markdown enabled or disabled in settings. I’ve used Simplenote forever, but if this continues, I’ll have to leave.
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Hi. Are you using the Simplenote web app in a browser? The web app seems to have recently discovered the ability to interpret some markdown codes directly. You could switch to one of the Simplenote apps on your computer/device. They do not do this.
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Thanks for the reply. Until today, I’ve used Simplenote exclusively in the web app. The issue occurs across browsers/OSs (Chrome, Firefox for Windows or macOS). But today I downloaded the Simplenote app for Windows, and it experiences the same exact issue. I create a brand new note, confirm that Markdown is not enabled, and type text surrounded by asterisks or with a pound sign, and the text displays as if Markdown were enabled.
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This is still broken, fwiw. And again, this is completely different behavior than ~2 months ago.
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The markdown setting only applies to whether you can view the markdown preview or not. It has never controlled this magical conversion of live text to formatted. I suspect the magic is coming from some component incorporated in Simplenote. Some maintenance may be required to alter this, but Simplenote is on a very limited maintenance program now, https://forums.simplenote.com/forums/topic/customer-update-on-simplenote/, so changes may be delayed.
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To be clear, I am pasting formatted text into Simplenote (bold, for example) that Simplenote is then converting to text surrounded with asterisks. This strikes me as different from typing text into Simplenote surrounded with asterisks, and then Simplenote showing the markdown preview.
Either way, I understand you are running a limited maintenance program, but it seems a pretty huge bug if users are completely unable to disable the markdown preview/conversion that is happening. -
Hi @harry7771, thanks for the details, and I’m sorry for the frustration here, especially for a long-time user. I see that my colleague replied to your other thread, but let me reply here as well.
Here’s what’s going on. When you paste content that’s already formatted (like bold text) into Simplenote, the web app and the Windows/Linux desktop apps convert that formatting into Markdown syntax: bold becomes
**text**, headings become#, links become[text](url). This is intended behavior, introduced in the Electron app around v2.25.The Enable Markdown setting only controls whether the formatted preview is available, it doesn’t govern this paste conversion, which is why toggling it didn’t change anything.
Because Simplenote only ever stores plain text, the way to avoid the Markdown syntax is to paste as plain text, which strips the incoming formatting instead of converting it:
- Windows / Linux (and browsers on Windows):
Ctrl + Shift + V - Mac (and browsers on Mac):
Cmd + Shift + V
- Windows / Linux (and browsers on Windows):
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Thanks very much for taking the time explain this functionality.
I suppose my main point of confusion is if I copy some bold text (say, from Google Docs in Chrome browser) and then paste that text into an app like Notepad (for Windows), the text pastes with no asterisks. Same thing for TextEdit for macOS. This matches the behavior that Simplenote used to have as well. Are Notepad/TextEdit actively stripping those formatting characters, and is that what Simplenote used to do?
Thanks again for the help. -
The difference comes down to what kind of editor each app is. Notepad and TextEdit (in plain-text mode) have no concept of formatting, so when you paste, they simply discard anything they can’t represent, so you end up with bare text.
Simplenote, on the other hand, is a Markdown-aware editor. Rather than throwing your formatting away, it translates it into the closest Markdown equivalent, basically keeping the formatting you pasted, expressed in Markdown. This is indeed a recent change made (see GitHub PR for more details).
That said, the option to paste as plain text is still there, with the workaround shortcuts shared above. I hope it will help!
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Embarrassingly, I was unaware of the keyboard-shortcuts for pasting as plain text. For well over a decade I’ve been pasting text into apps like Notepad and Simplenote for the primary purpose of stripping formatting away. I guess better late than never, but your instructing me how to paste as plain text totally resolves my issue. Thanks again for your help!
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I totally hear you @harry7771, and you’re not the only one! It wasn’t that long ago either that I’ve learned of those shortcuts, and have found myself using them more recently in other applications, so the trick shall prove useful beyond Simplenote.
As we’ve addressed the main question, I’ll mark this thread as resolved. Feel free to start a new one if you have a new question. 🙂
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