About Markdown to Text
This strips Markdown syntax and leaves the plain text behind — heading hashes removed, emphasis markers dropped, link targets discarded while keeping the link text, list bullets and blockquote markers taken out. What remains is the content as a reader would see it, without the notation used to format it.
The need for it comes up whenever formatted text has to become unformatted text: pasting a README into a plain-text field, preparing copy for a medium that has no markup support, or extracting the words from a document so they can be counted or searched.
Because the punctuation characters that Markdown relies on appear in ordinary prose as well, this is a lossy operation in the strict sense — an asterisk used for emphasis and one used as a multiplication sign both disappear. It is intended for preparing text to be read, not for editing a document you intend to keep in Markdown.
How to use Markdown to Text
- 1 Paste the Markdown content.
- 2 Headings, emphasis markers, link syntax and list bullets are removed, leaving plain text.
- 3 Copy the result into any field that does not accept formatted input.
Frequently asked questions
What happens to link addresses?
The address is dropped and the visible link text is kept. That is usually what you want when converting prose to plain text, since a bare URL in the middle of a sentence is noise — but if the address matters, copy it before converting.
Will my paragraphs still be separated?
Line structure is preserved, so paragraphs remain on their own lines. Only the markers that indicate formatting are removed, leaving the layout of the text as it was.
Does it remove asterisks used as multiplication signs?
Yes, which is the one genuinely lossy case. Emphasis markers and literal asterisks are indistinguishable to a syntax-based converter, so both are removed. Check the output if your document uses asterisks in any other sense.
Can I turn the text back into Markdown?
Not from this output — the formatting has been discarded and cannot be inferred from plain text. Keep the original Markdown if you need it again; this conversion is one-way by nature.
Free, online, and private
Free to use
Markdown to Text is completely free. There is no account to create, no login, and no hidden charge or usage limit.
Runs online in your browser
It is a free online tool that runs entirely in your browser. Nothing to download or install — open the page and start using it right away.
Your data stays private
All processing happens locally on your device. Your input is never uploaded, stored, or tracked, so it never leaves your browser.
How Markdown to Text behaves in detail
These are the specifics of this implementation — the exact ranges, defaults and fixed settings you are working with.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Headings | the `#` to `######` marker and the single space after it are removed; the text stays |
| Emphasis | **bold** and *italic* markers are removed — underscores are not handled by any rule |
| Links | [label](url) becomes just the label; the URL is discarded entirely |
| Line markers | leading `-`, `*`, `1.` and `> ` are stripped from the start of each line |
| Line structure | lines stay separate — nothing is re-wrapped, merged or re-indented |
Compiled from the implementation of this tool and checked against it by itoolnet.
What Markdown to Text does not do
Knowing the edges of a tool saves more time than another list of its features. These are the cases where it will not do what you might expect.
- Underscore emphasis is left alone. Text written as _under_ or __dunder__ keeps its underscores, because every emphasis rule in this tool keys off the asterisk character only.
- A markdown image loses just its link half. The link pattern matches from the opening bracket, so  is reduced to "!alt" — a stray exclamation mark standing in for the image.
- Fenced code blocks are not recognised as blocks. Only single backticks are stripped, so a three-backtick fence keeps two of its backticks and the code inside is neither de-indented nor treated as code.
- HTML entities are never decoded, so & stays "&" in the plain text, and markdown horizontal rules survive as a row of literal dashes rather than becoming a separator or disappearing.
Tested and documented by itoolnet, the team that builds and maintains this site.