Markdown to Text Converter

Technical writers pasting a README into a support ticket, developers copying a changelog into an email thread, and marketers moving a blog draft into a CMS that only accepts plain text all hit the same annoyance. Markdown formatting that looks clean in a renderer turns into a pile of hash marks, asterisks, and raw URLs when the destination does not understand it.

Paste any Markdown document and this converter returns clean plain text with the structure you choose to keep. List markers, link style, code block handling, table layout, and line breaks are all configurable. Everything runs locally, so unreleased docs never leave the machine.

Markdown input

Plain text output

List markers

Link style

Headings

Code blocks

Tables

Keep single line breaks

How the conversion works

The converter walks the document line by line, recognizing the block-level constructs first. Fenced code blocks delimited by triple backticks are captured before any inline processing runs, so asterisks inside code stay literal. Tables are detected by a header row followed by a pipe separator, then rendered in the chosen layout. Headings, setext underlines, blockquotes, and horizontal rules each get their own handler.

Inline formatting is stripped inside the remaining paragraphs. Images become their alt text, links collapse to the label or label-plus-URL per the link style, reference-style links drop their bracket suffixes, and bold, italic, and strikethrough markers are removed or kept per the emphasis style. HTML tags are stripped and common entities are unescaped back to their literal characters.

Finally the output is cleaned: runs of three or more blank lines collapse to one, leading and trailing whitespace is trimmed, and when keep-line-breaks is off every newline becomes a space. All of this runs in the tab with no network call.

Before and after: a typical README section

Input, a Markdown snippet from a README:

# Getting Started

Run `npm install` then open [the docs](https://example.com).

- Step one
- Step two

Output, the same content as plain text:

Getting Started

Run npm install then open the docs.

- Step one
- Step two

Who converts Markdown to plain text with this tool

Developers

Strip a README into plain text for a commit message or release note that will not render Markdown.
Convert a Markdown changelog into a flat text block for an email announcement.
Extract code samples by removing fences while keeping the indented content intact.

Production

Convert internal Markdown runbooks into plain text for systems that do not render formatting.
Generate flat-text search previews from Markdown documentation pages.
Produce clean text exports of Markdown meeting notes for distribution lists.

Workflow

Write in Markdown, convert to plain text here, then paste into a CMS that only accepts plain text.
Use label-plus-URL link style so URLs survive the trip into an email body.
Pair with html-to-markdown when the source is HTML, then strip to plain text in one extra step.

Common mistakes when stripping Markdown

Choosing remove for links when you need the URL. If the plain text is going into an email or a ticket, dropping the URL means the reader cannot follow the reference. Switch link style to text-with-url so the destination survives. Use remove only when you intentionally want a clean label list.
Removing code fences and losing block context. The remove option strips the triple-backtick lines but keeps the inner content indented or not depending on the code style. If the destination re-renders Markdown, use indent so the block is still recognized. If you are pasting into a plain text field, remove is fine.
Collapsing line breaks in a bulleted list. Turning off keep-line-breaks turns every list item into a single run-on paragraph. If the source has lists, keep the option on. Only turn it off for prose that should flow as paragraphs in an email.
Ignoring the stats counter. The stats line reports headings, links, images, code blocks, tables, and lists found in the source. If the counts are zero when you expected content, the input was probably already plain text or the Markdown used an unsupported syntax. Check the stats before assuming the conversion succeeded.

Best practices for Markdown to text workflows

1.Pick the output style for the destination: label-plus-URL for email, indent for code that will be re-rendered, and keep-line-breaks for lists.
2.Check the stats counter after conversion to confirm every heading, link, and code block in the source was found and processed.
3.Copy the output with the copy button rather than selecting the pre block manually, so trailing whitespace and indentation are preserved exactly.
4.For HTML sources, run html-to-markdown first to normalize the structure, then use this tool to strip to plain text in a second pass.

Frequently asked questions

What does this Markdown to text converter do?

It strips Markdown formatting from any document and returns clean plain text. Headings lose their hash marks, bold and italic markers are removed or optionally kept, links become just the label or label plus URL, images become their alt text, code fences are indented or removed, and tables are rendered as pipe-aligned or plain rows. You control the exact behavior with the options panel.

Why would I want to strip Markdown instead of rendering it?

Rendered Markdown is for humans reading a webpage. Plain text is for systems that do not understand Markdown: email bodies, SMS messages, Slack posts that lose formatting on paste, search index previews, commit messages, and CSV exports. When you paste a README into a ticket comment and the hash marks show up as literal characters, that is the problem this tool solves.

What happens to links and images?

By default a link such as [label](https://example.com) becomes just label, which reads naturally in plain text. Switch link style to text-with-url and it becomes label (https://example.com), useful when you need the destination to survive the conversion. Images become their alt text, so ![chart](chart.png) becomes chart. Change link style to remove to strip both the label and the URL entirely.

How are code blocks handled?

Three options control code blocks. Indent (the default) prefixes every line with four spaces, which preserves the block in plain text and in Markdown re-rendering. Keep-fences leaves the triple-backtick delimiters in place. Remove deletes the fence lines and keeps only the inner content, which is what you want when extracting a code sample into a ticket.

Can I keep single line breaks?

Yes. The keep-line-breaks option, on by default, preserves single newlines so a bulleted list stays one item per line. Turn it off and every newline becomes a space, collapsing the document into flowing paragraphs, which is the right shape for an email body or a tweet-length summary. Blank lines between paragraphs are preserved in both modes.

Does this tool send my text to a server?

No. All processing runs in JavaScript inside your browser tab and the page makes no network request with your input. The text is discarded when the tab closes. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the converter still works, which makes it safe to paste internal documentation or unreleased changelogs.

Is there a reverse tool for text to Markdown?

Yes. The html-to-markdown tool in the sibling set converts HTML into Markdown, which is the opposite direction. If you have plain text and want to add Markdown structure, that is a manual step, but if you have HTML from a webpage and want Markdown, use html-to-markdown first, then this tool to strip back to plain text when you need a clean copy.