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