Open an MD File Online

What is an .md file?

A file ending in .md (or the longer .markdown) is a text document written in Markdown. You can open it in any text editor and read every character, because there is nothing hidden in it — no fonts, no layout data, just text with a few symbols. A line starting with # is a heading, **word** is bold, a dash starts a list item, and rows of pipes form a table. Programs that understand the syntax draw the formatted result.

That simplicity is why .md files are everywhere: the README.md at the root of nearly every code repository, CHANGELOG.md, documentation folders, blog posts and notes apps — and, more recently, the instruction and plan files that AI coding tools read and write, such as CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md (see the CLAUDE.md viewer).

How to open an MD file on Windows, Mac, Linux and phones

Any text editor opens an .md file, but what you get is the raw source. To see the formatted document you need a Markdown viewer — and an online one saves you from installing anything:

• Windows: double-clicking an .md file usually opens Notepad or shows the “How do you want to open this file?” prompt. Instead, open this page and drag the file onto it, or choose Open → Open file….
• macOS: TextEdit and the Quick Look preview show the source text. Open this page in Safari or Chrome and drop the file onto the window. In the file dialog, Cmd+Shift+. reveals hidden folders such as .claude or .github.
• Linux and ChromeOS: the same page works in Firefox, Chrome or any other modern browser; drag the file in or use the file picker.
• iPhone, iPad and Android: open this site in your browser, tap More → Open file… and pick the file from Files or Downloads. The phone layout is a single reading pane with a bottom bar for Edit, Read, Outline and More.
• From a link: if the file lives on GitHub or in a Gist, use Open → From URL… and paste the address. A GitHub blob link is converted to the raw file automatically. You can also build a direct link: mdrender.com/?url= followed by the file's address.

You can also paste Markdown text straight into the editor — handy for answers copied from a chat window, where tables and code otherwise turn into a mess of symbols.

What you see once the file is open

The viewer renders GitHub-Flavored Markdown — headings, emphasis, links, images, lists, task lists, tables, strikethrough and footnotes — plus the extras technical documents use: fenced code blocks with syntax highlighting for 50+ languages and a copy button, GitHub-style alerts (> [!NOTE]), collapsible <details> sections, YAML front matter, Mermaid diagrams and KaTeX math. The outline sidebar lists every heading with the current one highlighted, so long files are easy to navigate, and you can choose among 16 light and dark themes, three font families, four text sizes and four page widths.

Documents you open are kept in your browser's local storage, so the file is still there when you come back — and gone when you click New or clear your site data.

Edit, convert or share the file

Switch from Preview to Split layout and the same file becomes a live editor: a formatting toolbar, shortcuts, list continuation and line-accurate scroll sync between source and preview. A browser page cannot overwrite the original file on your disk, so Export → Download .md saves your changes as a new file for you to move into place.

From the same view you can Download .html for a standalone styled page, Print / Save as PDF for a PDF, or Share to get a link that carries the whole document in its address — nothing is stored on a server, and anyone with the link sees exactly that text, so do not share files that contain secrets.

Privacy: the file stays on your device

Opening a local file does not send it anywhere: your browser reads it, renders it with JavaScript running on the page, and keeps it in localStorage. The only server request the app can make is the optional From URL fetch, which asks this site to download a public Markdown address for you because browsers block that across sites; the fetched text is passed straight back and is not stored or logged. Read more on the privacy page, or go straight to the Markdown viewer for every rendering feature.