Utility guide
Turning existing HTML back into editable Markdown
The reverse direction of Markdown to HTML comes up just as often in practice: content that already exists as HTML — exported from a CMS, copied out of a rendered web page, generated by a WYSIWYG editor — that needs to become plain, editable Markdown for a static site, a README, or a Markdown-native CMS.
What converts cleanly, and what doesn’t
Headings, paragraphs, emphasis, links, images, lists (including nested ones), code blocks and blockquotes all have a direct Markdown equivalent and convert losslessly. What doesn’t: inline styles, custom CSS classes, <div> layout structure, and anything Markdown has no syntax for (a multi-column layout, a specific font or color) is dropped — Markdown describes document structure, not visual presentation, so there’s nothing in the format to convert those to.
A common real use case: cleaning up copied web content
Selecting text on a web page and pasting it into most rich-text editors carries a surprising amount of hidden markup with it — inline style attributes, empty <span>wrappers, tracking attributes. Copying the page’s HTML (via “View Source” or a browser extension) and running it through this converter strips all of that down to the actual content structure, since Markdown has no way to carry inline styling through in the first place.
Frequently asked
Does this handle a full HTML page, or just a fragment?
Both — a full page with <html>/<head>/<body> tags converts fine, since the parser only pulls content out of the body. A bare fragment (just a few tags, no wrapping document) works the same way.
What happens to a table?
Converts to GitHub Flavored Markdown table syntax (pipes and a header separator row) — the same table syntax the Markdown to HTML Converter reads back, so round-tripping a table through both tools reproduces it.
Does this tool send my HTML anywhere?
No — parsing and conversion both run in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.