Hey Workflowy folks, we’re excited to announce a nice quality of life update for all of you who love using Markdown! Starting today, you can paste Markdown content directly into Workflowy, and if Workflowy supports it, it will render correctly. This is great for pasting from other popular applications that support Markdown without having to go back and adjust all your content’s formatting.
What Markdown Features Are Supported?
Here’s the list of Markdown elements you can paste into Workflowy that will be correctly formatted:
- Bold and italic text: **Bold**, *Italic*
- Headers:
#H1,## H2 - Lists: 1.First thing, – Important thing
- Blockquotes:
>My amazing quote - Links:
[Google](https://google.com) - Inline code strings:
`print('Hello world')` - Multi-line code blocks:
```My code block```
We’re excited to see how you use Markdown in Workflowy to streamline your workflow. Whether you’re a Markdown pro or just getting started, this feature is designed to make your note-taking experience more dynamic and intuitive.
Bug fixes
The team has also been busy squashing bugs so we’d like to share a selection of the more recent ones.
- Code formatting now works more reliably
- Code blocks within boards now align properly
- Todo items in boards with links are now clickable
- Link editor icon now aligns correctly with content
- All mirrors can now be toggled in search results
- Boards now display correctly on iOS and Android
- Content alignment is improved in landscape mode on mobile
Let us know what you think about the Markdown paste feature in the comments below, and as always, we’re here to listen and make Workflowy even better for you.
Until the next one! 🎉
Great addition! After a long period of stagnation, Workflowy is steadily improving and catching up step by step every month. Thank you so much!
Guys, I’ve asked support a few times over the years to add copy pasting node content as plain tab idented text, without bullets (like python code formatting). I can’t believe that can’t be done. As it is, I can’t share my notes as plain txt (say in a mail message or discord) because they are all flat and I have to indent them manually. Or am I missing something?
Copying the markdown lists into my workflowy, except the Bold and italic text,the other examples does not work out
Wicked cool. I don’t know if this is even possible, but it would be great to have the content formatted as markdown when copying _out_ of Workflowy as well.
And thanks for all the hard work. I really love Workflowy.
Thank you so much for leaving an option to disable this function. I can see how most people love it, but it is not compatible with the (weird) way I use Workflowy. And once I’m here, just wanted to say – Thank you for Workflowy, I can’t imagine life without it! [heart]
Are there any plans to enable the use of tables in the future? I find table formats very useful when thinking things through, so it’s a bit inconvenient that I can’t create them right now. Because of that, I currently have to use Google Sheets. If a table feature were available, I could keep everything in Workflowy.
Highlight feature is not working while pasting markdown, even though it appears while exporting ==Highlight==
This is AMAZING- thank you! It’s so close to being perfect.
LateX equation support is my final thing.
Would you also be able to set it so that code-blocks with a language specified get recognised? e.g. pasting this test code from R-Markdown
#————————–
# Heading 1
## Heading 2
– This is a list!
– Hello!
So you see
{r}
plot(1:10,1:10)
this should be text not code.
same as this
#————————–
Appears like the attached screenshot, where it’s not recognising the start of the code chunk because of the {r}, then starting the code at the end, and repeating it for some reason.
Here’s the screenshot
Hmm, would it not make more sense to have this apply for the Notes section, but not the bullets? Right now when I paste formulas etc it incorrectly interprets it as Markdown. However, inside a Note it would make much more sense to support Markdown?
The bullets alone will likely be a boon! It will be nice to be able to author workfloy bullets-as-code.
As others said: please make it possible to paste without intepreting as markdown. Sometimes you want to hold on to the markdown source, or you just had something that was markdown-like.
Finally, the blockquote and numbered lists are a bit off:
A failing test: Paste the folowing into VS Code and use the markdown preview, then paste into workflowy
> blockquote
> this is a blockquote
>
> with two paragraphs
[Google](https://google.com)
inline code:
print('Hello world')and back againmulti-line code block
has
multiple lines
1. list item
1. another list item
The blockquote renders as three blockquotes with a single > between in workflowy; in VS Code it’s one blockquote with two paragraphs.
The numbered list uses number 1 both times in workflowy, and is autonumbered 1., 2. in VS Code.
Excellent, thank you. Please add level 3–5 headers too! Why stop at 2?!
will math formula and code colorful update in 2025？
And handwriting
And widget
Hey yi12, thanks for your comment, just to clarify, you’re asking if we’re going to add:
Please make it so that undo / ctrl+z reverts the auto-formatting and restores the plaintext content pasted. Sometimes there is text that resembles markdown but is not actually meant as such, or one may want to demonstrate markdown syntax itself in an item’s text, etc.
finally, thanks!
👍
Links: [Google](https://google.com) The text of the subsequent URL cannot be searched.
Thanks for reporting that Landon.
Thank you for making our lives better. I’ve been using WF for 10 years! It’s been awesome! Never stop your great service to the world!
Thanks for supporting us for for over a decade Cameron! We have some pretty exciting things in the works for 2025.
Excelente !!!! Me alegra porque es útil. Espero que este 2025 mantengan el ritmo del 2024 que fue genial. Abrazos
Gracias Carlos, esperamos introducir muchas cosas interesantes y útiles este 2025.
Me alegro mucho Rodolfo y espero nuevas noticias en este 2025. Saludos a todo el equipo
What about notes?
Hey Gavan, what markdown would notes correspond to? Or do you mean you would like to see some markdown that is displayed as a note?
I think he means to ask about auto-formatting for markdown content pasted into the notes field of an item. I noticed that it doesn’t get auto-converted the same way that text pasted in the item itself does.
Cool feature. I would like to take this opportunity to report that when we use the Workflowy search magnifying glass in a browser (Chrome, Edge, etc.) on Windows, the result is taking a long time to appear, it is much slower than it was before (it shows a “Still searching” indicator at the bottom of the screen). In the Android app, the same search still works as it used to, that is, almost instantly. I don’t know if this problem may be related to the new features implemented in Workflowy. I have already opened a support ticket about it.
Hey FMM, thanks for reporting it to the support team. Not sure what the issue could be. I don’t think it’s directly related to any of the new things we’ve added but it’s possible we introduced some bug that causes that slowdown.
It’s markdown pasting party time! Thanks.
🎉🎉🎉
Thanks for this great update! I wish that when opening Workflowy, it would keep the tabs previously opened, still open. It would save me a lot of time.
Hey Dave, that’s an interesting idea. I’ll share that with the team.