HTML to Markdown Converter

Web copy, CMS exports and email templates arrive as HTML, while READMEs, wikis, note apps and many static-site tools want Markdown. This converter takes the HTML and writes the Markdown equivalent, so content can move into those tools without retyping it.

It also works as a cleanup step: legacy HTML drafts and snippets copied from a page's source come out as readable text with their headings, lists, links and emphasis intact, ready for a chat tool, an issue tracker or a note.

The HTML is read leniently, the way a browser reads it: unclosed paragraphs and list items, void tags such as <br> and <img>, and attributes in any quoting style are all fine. Headings h1 to h6 become # to ######, paragraphs are separated by blank lines, and <br> becomes a Markdown line break.

Links keep their URL and title ([text](url "title")), images become , strong and b become **bold**, em and i become *italic*, del and s become ~~strikethrough~~, and code becomes `code`. A <pre> block becomes a fenced code block, keeping a language-… class as its language. Blockquotes are prefixed with >, ordered lists keep their numbering (including a start value), nested lists are indented, <hr> becomes ---, and simple tables become pipe tables. Entities such as &amp; and &copy; are decoded.

Layout and styling have no Markdown equivalent, so divs, spans, classes and inline styles are dropped and only their text remains. Tables with merged cells or several header rows are flattened to a simple grid, and a form or an embedded video leaves nothing behind.

Scripts, styles, the document head and comments are removed entirely. Pasting a whole saved page works, but navigation menus and footers come through as text too, so paste just the content region when you can.

Read the output top to bottom: headings at the right levels, list numbering and nesting as expected, and links pointing where they should. Preview it in the Markdown tool you will use, since renderers differ slightly on nested lists and line breaks.

For anything official, financial or legal, compare the Markdown with the original page before publishing it, and restore any layout-dependent detail by hand.