Markdown Preview
Live Markdown preview
Live Markdown preview Runs locally in your browser
About the
The Markdown Preview renders your Markdown as you type, in a side-by-side view, following CommonMark with the GitHub extensions most people actually use: tables, task lists, fenced code blocks, strikethrough and autolinks. It is the quickest way to check a README before committing it, because the differences between what Markdown looks like in source and what it looks like rendered are not obvious, and table syntax in particular fails silently when a single pipe or dash is wrong. The rendered HTML can also be copied out if you need it somewhere that does not process Markdown itself.
Where people use the
- Checking a README renders correctly before pushing it.
- Drafting release notes or a changelog with a live view of the result.
- Converting a Markdown document to HTML for a CMS that does not accept Markdown.
- Reviewing someone else's Markdown pull request and seeing what it will look like.
How to use the
- 1
Paste or write your Markdown
The editor accepts anything from a single paragraph to a full document with headings, lists, links and code fences.
- 2
Watch the rendered panel
The preview updates on every keystroke, so a broken table or an unclosed fence shows up immediately rather than after a publish step.
- 3
Fix the source, not the preview
The preview is read-only. When something renders wrongly, the cause is almost always a missing blank line before a list or a table header without a delimiter row.
- 4
Copy the HTML if you need it
Switch to the HTML view to take the generated markup, which is useful for pasting into a CMS that expects HTML rather than Markdown.
Tips and best practices
- Leave a blank line before and after every block element; most mystifying rendering bugs are a missing blank line.
- Use fenced code blocks with a language name so the code is highlighted rather than treated as plain text.
- Keep one sentence per line in long documents; it makes the diffs readable later.
Frequently asked questions
Which Markdown specification is used?
CommonMark as the base, plus the GitHub Flavored Markdown extensions for tables, task lists, fenced code and strikethrough. That combination covers the README format on GitHub, GitLab and most documentation sites.
Why is my table not rendering?
A table needs a header row followed immediately by a delimiter row of dashes, with a blank line before the block. Each row must have the same number of pipes as the header. Any one of those missing turns the whole thing into a paragraph of text with pipe characters in it.
Why did my list items merge into one paragraph?
Markdown needs a blank line between a paragraph and a list that follows it. Without it, the list markers are treated as ordinary text.
Does it support LaTeX or math?
No. Math rendering needs a separate library such as KaTeX or MathJax and a different syntax. A dollar-sign expression here will render as plain text.
Is raw HTML allowed?
Yes, inline HTML passes straight through, which is what GitHub does as well. If you publish the output anywhere public, sanitise it first, because raw HTML is also how scripts get injected.
Where does my text go?
Nowhere. Parsing and rendering happen in your browser with a JavaScript Markdown library. Nothing is saved or transmitted, so the draft is gone when you close the tab unless you copy it out.