deftools.io Text & Data

📝 Markdown to Text

Strip Markdown formatting to plain text. Remove headers, bold, italics, links, code blocks, blockquotes, and lists while preserving paragraph structure.

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About this tool

Converts Markdown into clean, readable plain text by stripping all formatting syntax — headings, bold, italics, links, images, code blocks, blockquotes, and lists — while keeping the content and paragraph structure intact. Useful when you need to paste rich documentation into a plain-text-only field (SMS, commit messages without markup, plain-text email, or terminal output).

Example input:

# Hello World **Bold text** with *italics* and a [link](https://example.com). - List item one - List item two

Output:

Hello World Bold text with italics and a link. List item one List item two

Toggle Preserve paragraph breaks to keep the original blank-line separation between blocks; turn it off to collapse everything into a single continuous block.

FAQ

What happens to links and images?

Links are replaced with their display text: [click here](url) becomes just "click here". Images become their alt text, and an image without alt text is removed entirely.

Are code blocks preserved?

Fenced code blocks (``` ... ```) are removed entirely. Inline code (`code`) is unwrapped — the backtick delimiters are stripped and the content kept as regular text.

Does it handle HTML inside Markdown?

Yes — raw HTML tags are stripped. HTML comments (<!-- ... -->) are also removed.

Why does my output still have blank lines?

Uncheck "Preserve paragraph breaks" to collapse all line breaks into a single continuous block of text. With the option checked, the tool keeps the natural paragraph separation from your Markdown.

I have HTML instead of Markdown — which tool should I use?

Use the <a href="/html-to-text" class="text-accent hover:underline">HTML to Text</a> converter. It strips HTML tags while keeping paragraph breaks, headings, and lists readable. This tool only handles Markdown input.

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