Markdown to Plain Text

What This Tool Strips

This tool removes all standard Markdown and CommonMark formatting syntax, preserving the readable text content. Here is what each element becomes after stripping:

• Headers (# H1, ## H2, etc.) — the # symbols are removed, leaving just the heading text
• Bold (**text** or __text__) — the asterisks/underscores are removed, leaving just the text
• Italic (*text* or _text_) — the asterisks/underscores are removed
• Links ([text](url)) — only the link text is kept; the URL is discarded
• Images (![alt](url)) — the alt text is kept; the image URL is discarded
• Inline code (`code`) — the backticks are removed, code content is kept
• Fenced code blocks (``` blocks) — the fence markers are removed, code content is kept
• Blockquotes (> text) — the > prefix is removed
• List bullets (- item, * item, 1. item) — the bullet/number is removed
• Horizontal rules (---, ***) — removed entirely
• HTML tags — stripped, content preserved

When to Use a Markdown Stripper

Markdown strippers are most useful when moving content from a Markdown-aware environment (a GitHub README, a Notion document, a static site generator) to a plain text destination. Common scenarios include:

• Email composition — many email clients show raw Markdown syntax instead of formatted text
• CMS migration — importing Markdown content into a system that only accepts plain text
• Text analysis — word counts, readability scores, and NLP analysis work better on plain text
• Text-to-speech — TTS systems should not hear "hashtag hashtag My Title" or "asterisk asterisk bold"
• AI output cleanup — large language models often over-use Markdown formatting in responses

Preserve Structure Mode

The default Strip mode aggressively collapses whitespace and removes all structural markers. Preserve Structure mode keeps the original line breaks and spacing intact while still removing formatting syntax. This is ideal for documents where you want clean text that still has paragraph breaks and indentation, such as when preparing documents for publication in a plain text CMS.

Markdown Flavors

This tool handles CommonMark (the standard Markdown spec), plus common extensions from GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) including strikethrough (~~text~~), tables, and task list checkboxes (- [x] item). HTML-style tags embedded in Markdown are also stripped. Very exotic Markdown extensions from specific platforms may not be handled, but the output will still be readable.