Google Docs Paste

Paste content from Google Docs with formatting preserved instead of collapsed to plain text wrapped in **.

Built with the assistance of the forum thread Copy-pasting from Google Docs loses formatting and wraps text in.

Why

When you copy from Google Docs, the clipboard HTML is wrapped in <b style="font-weight:normal" id="docs-internal-guid-..."> and uses inline <span style="font-weight:700"> instead of semantic <strong>. Obsidian's built-in Turndown-based paste keeps the outer <b> (so everything ends up bolded) and drops the inner styled spans (so the real bold is lost). Lists get extra blank lines because Google nests <p> inside each <li>, links point at google.com/url?q=... redirects, and tables come through as inline-styled markup.

This plugin sniffs Google Docs HTML on paste and rewrites it into semantic HTML before handing it to Obsidian's htmlToMarkdown().

What's converted

• Inline: bold, italic, underline (kept as <u>), strikethrough, sub/superscript.
• Blocks: font-size-based heading detection (H1–H6), <p>-in-<li> flattening, dropped presentational styles.
• Links: google.com/url?q=... redirects unwrapped to the destination.
• Tables: inline styles stripped, first row promoted to <thead> / <th> so the output is a real Markdown table.
• Images: kept as remote URLs by default; can be downloaded into the vault attachments folder.
• Color / highlights: off by default; when enabled, kept as inline <span style="color:...;background-color:...">.

Non-Google-Docs pastes are untouched.

Install locally

This plugin is not (yet) in the community catalog, so install it manually as an unpacked plugin.

1. Build the plugin

   git clone https://github.com/bfgpollara/obsidian-google-docs-paste
   cd obsidian-google-docs-paste
   npm install
   npm run build
   

   This produces main.js next to manifest.json.

2. Copy the files into your vault

   Create a folder for the plugin inside your vault's hidden .obsidian directory and copy in the three files Obsidian needs:

   <YourVault>/.obsidian/plugins/google-docs-paste/
   ├── main.js          ← from step 1
   ├── manifest.json    ← from the repo
   └── styles.css       ← optional; omit if not present
   

   On macOS / Linux you can symlink instead of copying so rebuilds pick up automatically:

   ln -s "$(pwd)" "<YourVault>/.obsidian/plugins/google-docs-paste"
   

   On Windows (PowerShell, admin):

   New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink `
     -Path "<YourVault>\.obsidian\plugins\google-docs-paste" `
     -Target "<absolute-path-to-this-folder>"
   

3. Enable the plugin in Obsidian

   • Open Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins.
   • If you've never installed a community plugin: click Turn on community plugins.
   • Click the Refresh ↻ button next to Installed plugins (Obsidian re-scans .obsidian/plugins/).
   • Toggle Google Docs Paste on.
   • A new Google Docs Paste section appears under Community plugins in Settings — adjust toggles there.

4. Try it

   Copy any text out of Google Docs, paste into a note. Bold / italic / underline / strike / headings / lists / links / tables should all survive. Pastes from any non-Docs source go through Obsidian's built-in paste handler untouched.

Tested platforms

This plugin has been tested on macOS 26 and iOS 26. Other platforms should work but have not been verified directly.

Debugging

If a paste from Google Docs is not converted as expected, enable the debug option to gather information for a bug report:

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Google Docs Paste.
2. Under Diagnostics, toggle Show clipboard info on paste on.
3. Reproduce the paste. A Notice will list the clipboard MIME types, the detected source, and a preview of the HTML payload. The full HTML is also written to your vault root as _gdocs-paste-debug-<timestamp>.html.
4. Please open an issue on the GitHub page and attach the Notice text and the saved debug HTML file so the problem can be reproduced.

Remember to turn the toggle off again once you're done — every paste produces a Notice and a file while it's on.

Develop

npm install
npm run dev       # esbuild watch → main.js
npm test          # vitest, headless
npm run build     # production build

With the symlink from the install section above in place, npm run dev plus Obsidian's Reload app without saving (Ctrl/Cmd+R in dev or via the BRAT/Hot-Reload plugins) gives you a fast iteration loop.

Out of scope (for now)

• Google Sheets clipboard (different format)
• Google Docs comments / suggestions
• Equations (Google ships them as images)
• Round-trip from Obsidian back to Docs