Are you still using Google Drive and Google Docs? Would you like to not be doing that anymore? Are you unsure how to go about that in a way that isn’t daunting or annoying?
I have your solution. That solution is Ellipsus ( @ellipsus-writes ). Privacy-minded, anti-gen ai, and easy to use? Say less.
Now, admittedly, the most annoying thing about this is that unless you're fairly tech savvy, there's not a great way to mass-download your Google Docs as markdown (.md) files, which is what you'll need for this. Thankfully, though, you can mass upload those files to Ellipsus, so it's only annoying one way. For this post, I'm only going to be moving one file over for ease of explaining the process.
Here's a quick and handy guide on how to download and import your Google Docs into Ellipsus!
March 2026 EDIT: Ellipsus just added support for importing .docx files. You can follow the same steps below, but download as a .docx file from Google Drive instead. This will do a better job of preserving certain formatting that markdown doesn’t preserve. Additionally, you can mass-download entire folders of Google Docs as .docx files, unlike with .md. You can then batch-upload those to Ellipsus.
PART 1: Dowload your desired Google Docs as .md files.
First, open your Google Doc and look in the upper left hand corner. You're going to click on File, then Download, then Markdown (.md).
This google doc should now be living in your Downloads folder. (I'm a Windows user, so I'm not sure how this works on other operating systems, but I imagine MacOS is similar. And if you use Linux you probably don't need this.)
PART 2: Importing your file to Ellipsus
When you create an Ellipsus account, you will immediately be in the "Welcome to Ellipsus" file. Get out of there by clicking on the little home symbol in the upper left hand corner.
You should now be in your "My work" folder, which is the main, base folder for your profile. Obviously, I've put a bunch of files in mine already. You're welcome to add a subfolder by clicking on the "+ New" button, then clicking "new folder," or you can upload your markdown file directly to the base "My work" folder. For this, I'm going to create a subfolder.
Now, you should have an empty subfolder that looks something like this. Click on the "+ New" button again, then click "Import Markdown (.md)" which will open your file explorer (or equivalent).
Go to your downloads folder, click on the file you want to upload, then click "open" to upload. (If you want to upload more than one file at once, you can do so!)
After a few seconds and probably a page refresh, you should have this!
You've successfully uploaded your doc to Ellipsus!
Go forth and de-google yourself!
