How to use this online Markdown editor
The editor is split into two panes. The left pane is where you type: plain-text Markdown, exactly as you would write it in a README or a notes app. The right pane is the live preview - It re-renders on every keystroke, so what you see there is exactly what your document will look like once it is converted to HTML. On phones and small screens the panes stack vertically instead of sitting side by side, and the two panes scroll in sync so the preview follows wherever you are writing.
The toolbar teaches you the syntax
Above the panes sits the formatting toolbar. You never have to use it - Markdown is designed to be typed by hand - But it is the fastest way to learn. Select a word and click B, and the editor wraps it in **double asterisks**. Click the table button and a ready-made three-column table appears at your cursor, complete with the header row and alignment line, ready for you to fill in. Each button inserts real, correct syntax rather than hiding it, so every click doubles as a small lesson.
Word counts and autosave
Everything above happens locally, which is the main practical difference between this online Markdown editor and a desktop app: there is nothing to install and nothing to sign into. At the bottom, the status bar keeps a live count of words, characters and lines, and quietly confirms each time your draft is autosaved. Start with the sample document that loads on your first visit, delete it when you're ready, and make the page yours. If you get stuck on syntax, the Markdown guide walks through everything step by step.
See exactly what you'll publish, as you type
The biggest hurdle when you're learning Markdown is uncertainty: did that asterisk do what I think it did? MD Editor removes the doubt. Every keystroke re-renders the preview pane instantly, so a typo in a link or an unclosed code fence is visible the moment it happens - Not after you've published.
It renders the dialect GitHub uses
The preview renders GitHub Flavored Markdown, the dialect used by GitHub, GitLab and most modern tools. That means tables, task lists, strikethrough and fenced code blocks all display exactly the way they will on your README or blog.
Code, math and diagrams render too
A code fence with a language tag after the backticks gets colored. Leave the tag off and the block stays plain, because guessing the language would colour it wrong. Math between dollar signs is typeset with KaTeX, and a fence labelled mermaid is drawn as a diagram. Each of those libraries loads only when a document actually uses it, so a plain text document downloads none of them.
The toolbar inserts correct syntax for you - Select a word, press Ctrl+B, and it's bold. Over time the syntax sinks in and you stop needing the buttons at all. That's the point: the editor teaches you Markdown while you use it.
Markdown editor keyboard shortcuts
The most common formatting actions have keyboard shortcuts, so your hands never need to leave the keys. On macOS, use Cmd in place of Ctrl - Both are supported.
| Shortcut | Action | What it inserts |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl+B | Bold | Wraps the selection in **…** |
| Ctrl+I | Italic | Wraps the selection in *…* |
| Ctrl+K | Link | Wraps the selection in […](url) with a placeholder URL |
| Ctrl+S | Save | Downloads the document as a .md file |
| Tab | Indent | Inserts two spaces - Handy for nested lists and code |
Shortcuts are where an online Markdown editor either helps or gets out of the way, so the set here is deliberately small and mirrors what desktop editors already do. Ctrl+S deserves a special mention: instead of triggering the browser's useless "save this web page" dialog, it downloads your actual Markdown file. It's the same muscle memory you already have from every desktop editor, put to better use. And because Tab is captured for indentation, nesting a sub-list is as simple as pressing Tab at the start of the line.
Exporting your work
When your document is ready, you have four ways to get it out of the editor, all running locally in your browser:
The four export routes
Download .md saves the raw Markdown source as a file. This is the format you want for GitHub repositories, static-site generators like Hugo or Jekyll, and any notes app that speaks Markdown - Obsidian, Logseq, Zettlr and friends will all open it directly.
Download .html produces a standalone HTML file with a small embedded stylesheet. It opens in any browser, needs no external assets, and looks clean enough to email to a colleague or attach to a ticket as-is.
Copy HTML copies just the rendered markup - No <html> or <head> wrapper - To your clipboard. That is exactly what you want when pasting into a CMS such as WordPress's code editor, a knowledge base, or an email template where the surrounding page already provides the styling.
Print opens your browser's print dialog with the rendered preview. Choose "Save as PDF" as the destination and you have a polished PDF of your document in two clicks - No converter website, no upload, no watermark. For a deeper look at when each format makes sense, see our Markdown vs HTML comparison.
Autosave and privacy in a browser-based Markdown editor
Everything you type is automatically saved to your browser's localStorage a moment after each pause in typing - You will see a brief "Saved locally" note in the status bar. Close the tab, restart your computer, come back next week: your draft will be right where you left it, restored automatically when the page loads.
The key word is locally. Your text is stored on your own device and nowhere else. There is no account, no cloud sync, and no server that ever receives your words - Parsing, previewing and exporting all happen in JavaScript inside your tab. That makes the editor safe for drafts you would not paste into a random website: internal docs, unpublished posts, anything under NDA.
The flip side of local-only storage is that it lives and dies with your browser profile. If you clear your browsing data (or use a private/incognito window, which discards storage when closed), the draft is gone - We cannot recover it, because we never had it. The habit worth building is simple: when a document matters, press Ctrl+S and keep the .md file somewhere safe. Autosave is a safety net for the current session, not a backup system. The full details are in our privacy policy.
Why write in Markdown at all?
- Markdown formats text with a few punctuation marks instead of toolbar buttons.
- It stays readable as plain text, so a
.mdfile works in any editor, forever. - Ten minutes of practice covers almost everything you will ever use.
Markdown is a way of formatting text with a few simple punctuation marks: # for a heading, **bold** for emphasis, - for a list. It was designed in 2004 by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz so that a document would be readable as plain text and still convert perfectly to HTML.
Twenty years later it is the default writing format of the technical world. GitHub READMEs, Reddit comments, Discord messages, Notion pages, Obsidian notes, Hugo and Jekyll blogs, even ChatGPT answers - All Markdown. Learning it takes about ten minutes, and once you know it you can take notes, draft documentation, and publish content without ever fighting a ribbon toolbar again.
If you are brand new, start with our plain-language introduction to Markdown, then keep the cheat sheet beside you while you write.
Your first Markdown document in five minutes
You do not need a tutorial weekend. Open the editor and type a line starting with # - That is a heading. Press Enter twice and write a normal sentence - That is a paragraph. Wrap a word in double asterisks for bold, single asterisks for italic.
Start three lines with - and you have a list. Paste a URL inside [text](url) and you have a link. Fence a snippet with three backticks and you have a code block. At this point you already know more Markdown than most people ever need.
Tip: Leave a blank line before a list or a heading. A missing blank line is the single most common reason Markdown "does not work", and the live preview above will show you the moment it happens.
Everything else - Tables, task lists, footnotes, images - Is a lookup away in the cheat sheet, and the live preview confirms every keystroke as you go. Five minutes of typing beats an hour of reading about typing.
The whole language at a glance
Markdown's core fits in one small table. This is genuinely the bulk of the language:
| You type | You get |
|---|---|
# Title | A top-level heading |
**bold** / *italic* | bold / italic |
- item | A bulleted list item |
1. item | A numbered list item |
[text](url) | A hyperlink |
 | An embedded image |
`code` | Inline code |
> quote | A blockquote |
When you want the complete picture - Every element, every edge case, every common mistake - The complete Markdown guide covers it all in order, and the tables guide handles the one construct that trips everyone up.
Tips for writing Markdown faster
Start with the headings. Before writing any prose, sketch the skeleton of your document as a list of # and ## lines. The preview instantly shows you the outline, and filling in paragraphs under an existing structure is far faster than inventing structure as you go.
Let the toolbar teach you. Use the buttons freely at first, but glance at what they insert. After a dozen tables you will notice you can type the | --- | line from memory - At that point the toolbar has done its job and your hands never need to leave the keyboard.
Keep the cheat sheet one tab away. The Markdown cheat sheet covers every piece of syntax on a single page. Looking up "how do I nest a list again?" takes five seconds there, versus a minute of trial and error in the editor.
Practice with real notes. Markdown sticks when you use it for things you actually need: meeting notes, a packing list with checkboxes, a README for that side project. Ten minutes of genuine writing beats an hour of tutorials.
Trust the preview, not your memory. If something looks wrong on the right, fix it now - A missing blank line before a list or an unclosed code fence is trivially visible in the preview and invisible in the source.
Who writes in Markdown today?
Developers were first: every README on GitHub, every issue, every pull-request description is Markdown, in the GitHub Flavored dialect. But the format long ago escaped the terminal.
Then everyone else caught up
Technical writers build entire documentation sites from .md files with tools like MkDocs and Docusaurus. Bloggers write posts for Hugo, Jekyll and Astro in it. Students keep lecture notes in Obsidian and Notion, both Markdown at heart. Researchers draft papers in it and convert to Word or LaTeX with Pandoc. And anyone who chats with an AI assistant reads Markdown-formatted answers every day, whether they realize it or not.
That breadth is the practical argument for learning it once: the same ten symbols work in your notes app, your team wiki, your blog and your code repository. If you are deciding between formats, our Markdown vs HTML comparison lays out exactly where each one wins.
A complete learning library, free in two languages
MD Editor is more than the tool. The site is built as a full Markdown curriculum you can work through in order, in English or Traditional Chinese:
- What is Markdown? - The plain-language introduction: history, philosophy and where the format is used.
- The complete Markdown guide - Every syntax element with examples, from headings to inline HTML.
- The cheat sheet - The whole language on one page, built for bookmarking and printing.
- Markdown tables - Alignment, escaping pipes, formatting inside cells and the mistakes that break rendering.
- GitHub Flavored Markdown - Task lists, alerts, mentions, footnotes and everything else GFM adds.
- Markdown vs HTML - An honest comparison of when each format is the right choice.
- The FAQ - Direct answers to the questions people actually ask, each with its own deep-dive page.
Seven tools alongside the guides
Beyond the guides there are seven free Markdown tools: convert a document with Markdown to HTML, save it with Markdown to PDF, build a table in the table generator, or open a file you were sent in the Markdown viewer. Each one runs in your browser, same as the editor above.
The whole library is free and carries no advertising; about MD Editor explains who builds it and why. Every page cross-links to the others, so you can start anywhere and follow the thread. Keep the editor open in a second tab while you read: Markdown sticks when your fingers learn it, not just your eyes.