Can you turn the Atlassian/Confluence Markup off and Markdown On?

[Peter Luttrell]

I despise the Atlassian/Confluence Markup and the way the Confluence and JIRA editors handle it. 

Is there a way to completely disable it and use Markdown instead?

If you want to reference code in markdown it takes <2 seconds to add the ` char around it. But in Atlassian/Confluence Markup it's an absolute pain every time. Using the `Preformatted` works horribly because the editor forces you to a new line.

The `Import Markup` and then pasting in Markdown works, but it's a one-time thing. So I've started keeping my documentation in a GIT repo in Markdown format and every time I want to change it I use a real Markdown editor and paste it in. And when others update Confluence, I have to manually merge their changes. Not cool.

[Stephen Deutsch]

If you want to just use Markdown, why not use one of the plugins that renders Markdown in Confluence? There are some free options:

Server:

Markdown Macro for Confluence

Cloud:

Render Markdown

Note that you won't be able to embed Confluence macros inside, so you'd have to break your markdown in pieces (i.e. insert multiple macros as such: Markdown macro, Confluence Macro, another Markdown macro for the rest of your text, etc.).