DevTools Logo

Markdown to Plain Text

Markdown to Plain Text

Strip Markdown formatting to clean, readable plain text — in your browser

Markdown

Paste Markdown to strip

Examples

Strip a README-style snippet

Input
# Getting Started

Install with **npm** and run `npm start`.

- Fast
- [Documented](https://example.com)
- *Simple*

> A quick note.
Output
Getting Started

Install with npm and run npm start.
Fast
Documented
Simple
A quick note.

Headings, bold, inline code, list markers, links and blockquotes are all stripped, leaving the readable prose in order.

Images, reference links and bold

Input
## See also

![Diagram](./diagram.png) and check [the spec][spec] for details.

**Important:** Read the [manual](https://example.com/manual) first.

[spec]: https://example.com/spec
Output
See also

Diagram and check the spec for details.

Important: Read the manual first.

[spec]: https://example.com/spec

Images keep their alt text; inline reference links collapse to their label; the reference definition stays (it doesn't match the link-target pattern the tool removes).

Inline code inside a list

Input
- Run `pnpm build` first
- Then run `pnpm test`
Output
Run pnpm build first
Then run pnpm test

List markers and inline-code backticks are removed in separate passes, so a code span inside a list line still unwraps correctly.

About this tool

Markdown is great for writing, but most of its syntax — hashes, asterisks, brackets, backticks — is noise when you only want the readable content. Copy-pasting a README into a chat, a ticket or a transcript still leaves the formatting markers behind, and stripping them by hand is tedious.

This tool removes the Markdown syntax and keeps the visible text. Fenced code blocks are kept as their inner contents; inline code is unwrapped; headings, blockquotes, list markers, bold, italic and strikethrough are stripped; links and images collapse to their visible label; horizontal rules are removed; and runs of three or more blank lines collapse to a single paragraph break.

The transformation is a sequence of regex passes over the document — purely client-side, no parsing library and no upload. Use it to prepare README content for an email, a status page, a terminal log or a search index.

How to use

  1. Paste your Markdown

    Drop a README, blog post or any other Markdown document into the left pane — the plain-text output on the right updates as you type.

  2. Read the stripped output

    Compare with the source to confirm everything important survived. Links and images collapse to their alt text; lists become one item per line.

  3. Copy the result

    Click Copy text to put the plain version on your clipboard and paste it into chat, a ticket or a status report.

Use cases

Pasting a README into Slack, Teams or email

Most chat clients render a subset of Markdown, but stray asterisks and brackets can still leak through. Strip the source first and paste plain text.

Pre-processing documents for search indexing

Indexers benefit from clean text. Strip Markdown syntax before tokenising, and links/images keep their visible labels so they remain searchable.

Generating transcripts from documentation

Pull a documentation page into the tool, copy the plain version into a meeting transcript or a status report, and skip the formatting noise.

Cleaning rendered HTML back into plain text

Although designed for Markdown, the regex passes also strip a lot of common pasted HTML — useful when a CMS only exports HTML and you need plain text.

What gets stripped

Markdown syntaxBecomes
# Heading … ###### HeadingHeading
**bold**, __bold__bold
*italic*, _italic_italic
~~strikethrough~~strikethrough
[label](url)label
![alt](url)alt
`inline code`inline code
```fenced```the inner code text
- item / * item / + itemitem
1. itemitem
> quotequote

Three or more consecutive blank lines collapse to one paragraph break, matching CommonMark's paragraph rule.

Common mistakes

Mistake:Expecting the output to be HTML.

Fix:The output is plain text, not HTML — entities like & are not decoded and tags are not stripped; for HTML input use the dedicated HTML-to-text tool.

Mistake:Putting Markdown inside blockquotes without a space after >.

Fix:The regex expects > followed by optional whitespace. Markdown tolerates >foo without a space, but this tool's blockquote rule looks for the standard >space form.

Mistake:Using the tool to convert Markdown to a different markup.

Fix:The output is plain text — for HTML use an MD→HTML converter; for BBCode or AsciiDoc there's no canonical transform.

Mistake:Assuming reference-link definitions are removed.

Fix:The stripper removes [label][id] link usages, not the [id]: url definition lines — clean those up separately or remove them before pasting.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

Writing Clean Markdown: Rules Worth Following

The small Markdown style rules that keep documents consistent, diff-friendly, and safe to render — and how to catch violations automatically.

References & standards

Related tools

Binary Text Translator

Convert text to binary or hex bytes and decode it back

Case Converter & Text Formatter

Convert text between 14 different case formats including camelCase, snake_case, kebab-case with batch processing and advanced options

Character Frequency Analyzer

Count character, letter and word frequencies for text analysis

Find and Replace Text

Find and replace text with optional regex, case, and multiline matching

HTML to Markdown Converter

Paste HTML and get clean Markdown. Configurable heading style, bullet marker, and code block style — all processed locally in your browser.

Keyword Extractor

TF-IDF keyword extraction from any document — ranked terms with scores