Google Docs moves away from HTML to canvas-based rendering approach

While this update will not affect the functionality of the features in Google Docs, it may impact some current Chrome extensions, where they may no longer work as intended and may need to be updated.

Google Docs is updating the way it renders documents by moving away from the current HTML-based rendering approach to a canvas-based approach for improved performance and consistency across different platforms.

While this update will not affect the functionality of the features in Google Docs, it may impact some current Chrome extensions, where they may no longer work as intended and may need to be updated.

"Some Chrome extensions rely on the way the backend of a Google Doc is structured or specific bits of HTML to function properly. By moving away from HTML-based rendering to a canvas-based rendering, some Chrome extensions may not function as intended on docs.google.com and may need to be updated," Google said.

Admins and developers are strongly recommended to review the current extensions deployed within their organization and to ensure any in-house Chrome extensions continue to work as intended, Google has recommended migrating them to the Workspace Add-ons framework. This will help ensure there will be less work in the future to support periodic UI implementation changes to Docs.

For those unable to migrate to the Google Workspace Add-ons framework, they can directly notify their team.

Google Docs' migration to a canvas-based rendering approach will take place over the course of the next several months.