How to make new cells in ipython notebook markdown by default?

Question

Currently, whenever you create a new cell in an iPython notebook, it defaults to a opening up a cell for Python code. I can then change it to markdown by hitting the keyboard shortcut ctrl m m

Is there any method or any setting I can tweak so that new cells default to being in "markdown mode"?

I did find this question which appears to ask the same thing, but it was erroneously flagged as a duplicate and wasn't answered.

Answer 1

I was just reading the IPython notebook js code, and found the insert_cell_below method at https://github.com/ipython/ipython/blob/master/IPython/html/static/notebook/js/notebook.js#L849 .

If you want to do this programatically, it would simply be a case of doing something like:

from IPython.display import display, Javascript

def markdown_below():
    display(Javascript("""
    IPython.notebook.insert_cell_below('markdown')
    """));

markdown_below()

This would be fairly early to turn into a button on the toolbar in a similar way to the gist button in https://github.com/minrk/ipython_extensions .

HTH

Answer 2

Quote from Brian E. Granger in 2012 from this forum: http://python.6.x6.nabble.com/Start-notebook-with-custom-markdown-code-snippets-as-default-td4997506.html

The best way of doing this right now is to clone an existing notebook. We don't have a great way of doing that, but starting in Jan, we will be working on the dashboard and we will add things like that.