As a part of Nextcloud 17, Nextcloud released [Text](https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/text), a fancy new WYSIWYG editor for markdown with support for collaboration.
Personally, I quite liked the old interface: A simple plaintext editor with syntax highlighting, paired with a side-by-side preview. Nextcloud Text was a step in the wrong direction for me, but I completely understand why Nextcloud did it.
However, I do quite a lot through the nextcloud web UI, including write this post, so an interface I enjoy is quite important.
Fortunately, it's possible to restore the old UI in all its glory, with the installation of two extra apps. Disable the Text extension, enable these, and you'll be good to go!
`files_texteditor` is an official app which adds a simple but familiar plaintext editor to nextcloud, restoring the functionality of the original app from Nextcloud <16.
`files_markdown` is the extension most people will be after. This is an extension which brings back the previous markdown editor, and makes it the default editor for markdown files, restoring Nextcloud's markdown editing experience to its former glory.
I didn't discover this myself, but I did spend far too long looking into it. The exact instructions were from a [GitHub issue](https://github.com/icewind1991/files_markdown/issues/136#issuecomment-560134316).