Google Docs now opens, edits, and saves .md files natively — no conversion, no formatting loss, no extensions required. The feature is live as of October 6, 2026, and rolling out globally to all Google accounts, personal and Workspace alike. It arrives after years of user demand on Reddit and Google’s own support forums, and after competitors like Proton Docs shipped it long ago.  The rollout is gradual: Google says full availability may take up to 15 days.  Users can already view rendered previews of Markdown files directly in Google Drive, a small but meaningful upgrade for developers, technical writers, and students who juggle notes across Obsidian, VS Code, or Jupyter.  Before this, importing a .md file meant converting it to Docs format. A process that routinely stripped comments, broke nested lists, and mangled code blocks. Now, the raw structure stays intact.  No new app, no third-party add-on, no workaround. Just click and edit.  This isn’t a mobile story. It’s a Docs story, desktop-first, cloud-native, and quietly essential for anyone who writes in plain text but collaborates in the browser.