Copying Markdown text from Visual Studio Code

Scenario

You’re trying to copy Markdown out of a .md document in VS Code and the results aren’t as you’d expect when you go to paste elsewhere. I was trying to paste it into Notion and most of the formatting wasn’t honored. Bizarre.

The Fix

Turns out VS Code is trying to be overly helpful and applying syntax highlighting when we copy text. You’re going to want to disable this. On a Mac:

  1. Code > Preferences > Settings > Text Editor
  2. Uncheck Copy With Syntax Highlighting

Uncheck Copy With Syntax Highlighting.

Written by Matt Haliski

The First of His Name, Consumer of Tacos, Operator of Computers, Mower of Grass, Father of the Unsleeper, King of Bad Function Names, Feeder of AI Overlords.