Google Docs Paste

Google Docs Paste — Obsidian Plugin

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.

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