Open and read Markdown files online
A Markdown file opened in a plain text editor shows its syntax, not its formatting: pound signs where headings should be, pipes and dashes where a table should be, asterisks around every bold word. This Markdown viewer renders the file instead. Drop a .md file on the page, click Upload, or paste Markdown into the editor, and you read it the way its author intended — headings, lists, tables, links, images, and highlighted code.
Nothing needs installing, and it works the same on Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, and phones. The file is read in your browser rather than sent to a server, so opening an internal design doc, a private repository's README, or meeting notes carries no upload risk.
What is Markdown?
Markdown is a plain-text formatting syntax created in 2004 to be easy to write and easy to read before it is rendered. A line starting with # becomes a heading, lines starting with - become a bulleted list, **bold** and _italic_ mark emphasis, and backticks wrap code. Files usually end in .md or .markdown.
It has become the default for developer writing: README files, CONTRIBUTING guides, changelogs, GitHub issues and pull requests, wikis, documentation sites built with Docusaurus, MkDocs, Jekyll, or Hugo, and notes apps like Obsidian and Joplin. The same file reads fine as raw text and renders into clean HTML, which is exactly what a viewer is for.
GitHub-flavored Markdown, rendered the way GitHub shows it
Most Markdown in the wild is GitHub-flavored Markdown (GFM), the dialect GitHub, GitLab, and most editors use. The preview follows it, and styles the result the way GitHub lays out a README:
- Tables with header rows and column alignment, scrolling sideways when they are wider than the page.
- Task lists, where
- [x] and - [ ] become checked and unchecked boxes. - Fenced code blocks with syntax highlighting for the language named after the opening backticks, plus a copy button on every block.
- GitHub alerts —
> [!NOTE], > [!TIP], > [!IMPORTANT], > [!WARNING], and > [!CAUTION] — as coloured callouts. - Strikethrough, autolinked URLs, reference-style links, and heading anchors, so links like
[Install](#install) jump within the document. - YAML front matter from Jekyll, Hugo, or Docusaurus, shown as a table of its fields rather than as stray text.
- The inline HTML READMEs depend on: centred headers and logos,
<details> sections, <kbd> keys, and sized images.
Preview a GitHub README — or check yours before you push
Click Load from URL and paste a GitHub repository link: the viewer fetches the repository's README from its default branch. A link to any Markdown file on GitHub (the …/blob/main/… address you copy from the browser) loads that file, and gists work too. Because the document's address is known, relative image paths and links resolve against it, so logos, screenshots, and diagrams appear as they do on GitHub.
Writing a README of your own? Paste it in and check that the table columns line up, the code blocks are fenced with the right language, and the anchor links in your table of contents actually land on their headings — before the commit rather than after.
Write with a live preview
Split view puts the Markdown source beside the rendered preview, and the preview updates as you type. The two panes scroll together by source line rather than by percentage, so a long code block or a tall table on one side doesn't drift the other out of step. Switch to Markdown for a full-width editor, or Preview for a distraction-free reading view.
The editor is the same one that powers VS Code, with Markdown syntax colouring, find and replace (Ctrl or Cmd + F), multiple cursors, and soft-wrapped lines. The Outline button lists every heading for quick navigation, and the status bars count lines, characters, words, and estimated reading time.
Convert Markdown to HTML or PDF
The Export menu turns the document into something you can share. HTML page downloads a complete, self-contained .html file with its stylesheet inlined — it opens correctly in any browser, attaches to an email, or can be hosted as-is. PDF opens the rendered document, without the editor or page chrome, in your browser's print dialog, where Save as PDF produces a clean, paginated file.
Copy HTML puts just the rendered markup on your clipboard for pasting into a CMS, a blog editor, or an HTML email. And Markdown downloads the source unchanged, named after the file you opened.
Safe to open Markdown from anywhere
Markdown allows raw HTML, which means a file from an unknown source could carry a script. The viewer never runs it: the rendered output is sanitized with DOMPurify before it reaches the page, stripping scripts, event handlers, inline styles, forms, and javascript: links, while ordinary formatting HTML survives. Links in the preview open in a new tab.
The document itself is never uploaded. The only network requests are the ones you ask for — a URL you choose to load — and the images the document references, which your browser fetches directly from wherever they are hosted.
Markdown and JSON, together
Documentation often has to show data. The JSON to Markdown converter turns an array of JSON objects into a GitHub-flavored Markdown table you can paste straight into a README and check here. For JSON examples inside fenced code blocks, run them through the JSON formatter first so the snippet in your docs is valid and consistently indented, and when a README's front matter or config lives in YAML, the YAML to JSON converter shows it as structured data.