Why doesn’t Google chat support basic markdown formatting or syntax highlighting? Neither CommonMark nor GFM is supported, so no syntax highlighting and no live preview of markdown elements.
The differential between the Markdown formatting within Google Chat and in other applications is, on its own, enough to frustrate me into using other apps instead. This approach means that I can’t add headers and subheaders, can’t add quote blocks, can’t denote that a code block is YAML, and can’t make my own hyperlinks or bold text according to the standard practices. To be frank, the only reason I continue to use Google Chat is because my company is making it required.
Even if the target audience is indeed non-technical folks, most of these features would not affect those folks in the slightest.
Markdown formatting and syntax highlighting can make text more readable and engaging, allowing users to focus on the content rather than the formatting. This can lead to increased user satisfaction and retention.
## Enhanced Collaboration:
Markdown formatting and syntax highlighting can facilitate collaboration by making it easier for users to communicate complex ideas and code snippets. This can be particularly useful in products like Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides, where users often work together on documents and projects.
## Increased Productivity:
By providing markdown formatting and syntax highlighting, Google can help users work more efficiently, especially developers and technical writers who rely on these features to create and share content. This can lead to increased productivity and a competitive advantage for Google’s products.
Google Chat’s message formatting is intentionally limited to a small set of lightweight markdown-like features, mainly bold, italics, inline code, and block code using backticks, without full CommonMark or GitHub-flavored Markdown support. This is a design choice to keep rendering consistent across web, mobile, and integrations, and to avoid complex parsing that could break in threaded or bot-driven conversations. If you need richer formatting or syntax highlighting, the practical workaround is to send messages via a Chat app or bot using the cards API and card JSON, which lets you control layout, add headers, links, and even styled code blocks. For developer-heavy discussions, some teams pair Chat with linked documents in Google Docs or host snippets in Cloud Shell or GitHub and share the link for proper syntax highlighting.