A distraction-free online Markdown editor
Writing Markdown is fast, but it is easy to miss a broken table or an unclosed code fence until the document is published. This online Markdown editor shows a live, rendered preview next to your text, so you see mistakes immediately. It also exposes the HTML that your Markdown produces, which is useful when you need to paste the result into a system that does not understand Markdown.
Markdown cheat sheet
| You type | You get |
|---|---|
# Heading 1 … ###### Heading 6 | Headings of six levels |
**bold**, _italic_, ~~strike~~ | Bold, italic and strikethrough text |
[text](https://example.com) | A link |
 | An image |
- item or 1. item | Bulleted or numbered list |
- [ ] task | Task list checkbox |
> quote | Block quote |
`code` and fenced blocks with three backticks | Inline code and code blocks |
| a | b | rows with a |---|---| separator | Table |
--- on its own line | Horizontal rule |
Writing a good README
A README is often the first thing people read about your project. A structure that works for most projects:
# Project name
One sentence on what it does and who it is for.
## Installation
## Usage
## Configuration
## Contributing
## LicenseKeep examples copy-pasteable, put commands in fenced code blocks with a language (```bash), and use a table for options. The preview makes it easy to check that everything renders before you push.
Common Markdown mistakes the preview catches
- Missing blank lines – a list or heading directly after a paragraph line may not render as expected. Leave an empty line before block elements.
- Indentation that creates code – four leading spaces turn a paragraph into a code block.
- Unclosed code fences – forgetting the closing backticks turns the rest of the document into code, which the preview makes obvious.
- Broken tables – every row needs the same number of pipes as the header, and the separator row is required.
- Underscores in words –
snake_case_namesare safe in GFM, but in some classic parsers they start italics; wrap identifiers in backticks.
Editor options
- GitHub Flavored Markdown – tables, task lists, strikethrough and autolinks, as on GitHub and GitLab.
- Line breaks – turn single newlines into line breaks, matching GitHub comments and many chat apps.
Who uses a Markdown editor?
Developers use it for READMEs, pull request descriptions and documentation. Writers and bloggers draft posts in Markdown because it keeps them focused on words instead of toolbars, then export clean HTML. Students and researchers take structured notes that remain readable as plain text years later, whatever software they use.
Preview safety and privacy
The preview is sanitized, so scripts or event handlers inside raw HTML do not run, and it is displayed in an isolated frame. Your text is processed in your browser and is not saved on a server, so download or copy your work before closing the tab.
Related tools
Need only the HTML? Markdown to HTML gives you the code without the preview. Starting from existing web content? Convert it with HTML to Markdown, then continue editing here. Building a table? The Markdown table generator creates correctly aligned pipe tables from spreadsheet data.