Markdown to PDF
Markdown to PDF that keeps the text selectable and searchable. A4 pages, an 11pt body, code on a light grey panel, links still clickable.
Preview
Document title
A short paragraph with bold, italic, and inline code, plus a link.
Section
- First point
- Second point
- Nested ordered item
- Another nested item
A blockquote for emphasis.
| Item | Qty |
|---|---|
| Apples | 3 |
| Pears | 5 |
function hello() {
return "world";
}
What lands in the PDF
Could not create the PDF.
Built in the background
What lands in the PDF
How to use
- Paste your Markdown over the sample in the left pane. The preview redraws as you type, and the cards under it say what will land in the PDF.
- Choose the paper and orientation, and whether each # heading starts a new page.
- Press Download PDF. When the file is already built it arrives at once; otherwise the build shows in the tab bar until it does.
About this tool
Markdown to PDF is the boring last step of a lot of writing. The notes are finished, and the person waiting on them wants a file they can open and print. Paste your Markdown into the left pane, watch the preview assemble on the right, and the strip under it already says how many pages the file will be and how big, because it is built in a worker while you pause. The text inside is really text, so a reader can select a line or hit Ctrl+F and find a word.
Structure survives the trip. A single # becomes a 22pt heading and ## an 18pt one, while body copy sits at 11pt with 1.35 line spacing. Code is set in Liberation Mono on a light grey panel, the face that matches the Courier New the Word sibling writes. Tables put their header row in bold and repeat it on every page, short columns sized to their content. Links stay live and blue, and a mermaid fence is drawn as a picture rather than printed as its source.
Choose A4 or Letter, portrait or landscape, and tick New page at each # heading when each section should open on a fresh page; the first heading never leaves a blank page behind it. The file is named after your first heading unless you type another name.
A README handed over as four honest pages
Paste in a project README before a handover call and the preview tells you what the PDF will and will not carry. The three shield badges at the top are images living at URLs, so they will land as their alt text in italics; delete that line before exporting and nobody asks what build passing in slanted grey means.
Everything else makes the trip intact. The install commands sit on their grey panels, the config table splits the width evenly, the deep links stay clickable, and the reviewer can search the result for the flag they care about because the text is real text, not a screenshot of it.
Good to know
- Images only reach the page if they are inline base64 data URIs in PNG or JPEG form. A picture that points at a URL or a file path comes out as its alt text in italics, because the finished PDF has no way to go and fetch it, and the Pictures card says so before you download.
- Raw HTML is printed rather than rendered. The img and div tags people sprinkle through a README show up literally, tag brackets and all.
- Code fences get no syntax colouring. The language tag after the backticks is read and then ignored, so a JavaScript block and a YAML block look identical apart from their content.
Frequently asked questions
Can I copy text out of the finished PDF?
Every glyph is real text drawn by pdfmake, so select-and-copy works and so does search. It also keeps the file small, since there is no picture of the page sitting inside it.
How do I force a page break between sections?
Tick New page at each # heading. Every top-level heading after the first then opens a fresh page; a --- rule still only draws a thin line where it sits.
Do task list checkboxes work?
They print as literal square brackets inside a bullet. The parser is plain markdown-it with linkify turned on and no task-list plugin, so swap the boxes for an x or a dash before exporting if they matter.
Can I upload a .md file instead of pasting?
There is no file picker on this page. Open the .md in whatever editor you wrote it in, select everything, and paste it into the left pane; the preview catches up as soon as you let go.
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