Google’s making code formatting a breeze in Docs

Google Docs is getting a brand new characteristic that may make it simpler to point out code in an easy-to-understand means. The company announced that it’s including code blocks to its “smart canvas” system, which is able to mechanically add the right spacing and color-coding for quite a lot of programming languages, comparable to Python, C, and Javascript.

Before this, getting code to look good in Google Docs required workarounds or add-ons, which weren’t essentially essentially the most handy. While that wasn’t the tip of the world, ensuring code shows correctly is essential for documentation, and having totally different components of the code show in several colours makes it a lot simpler to learn if there’s greater than a single line or two.

Google says you’ll be capable of entry the characteristic by going to Insert > Building Blocks > Code Block after which deciding on the related language. You’ll additionally be capable of sort “@project assets” into your doc to tug up the menu, much like the way you’d summon the emoji picker.

The characteristic might take some time to roll out — Google’s weblog put up says some folks might not even have it by January 18th, relying on their Workspace’s settings — and it’ll solely be accessible to folks with particular subscription tiers. If you’re utilizing a private Google account, a legacy G Suite account, or numerous Essential and Starter Workspace tiers, you gained’t have entry to it, in keeping with the corporate’s press launch. That’s a little bit of a bummer for hobbyist coders attempting to jot down directions for his or her APIs, although I’ll admit that this characteristic does seem to be it’d be most helpful for larger firms.