Your draft survives a refresh. It is kept in this browser and nowhere else — no account, no upload, no sync. Losing an hour of writing to a stray reload is the one failure an editor has no excuse for.

Live preview, the keyboard shortcuts you already use, and a check that tells you what is wrong with the document — empty links, headings that skip a level, code fences left open. Those are the errors that survive proofreading, because they look fine in the source.

Markdown Editor

Live

Document check

Everything runs in your browser. The draft is stored on this device only and never transmitted.

Keyboard shortcuts

The ones you already use, because an editor that ignores Ctrl+B feels broken within thirty seconds:

Shortcut	Does	Note
`Ctrl`+`B`	Bold	Wraps the selection, or opens a pair where the cursor is
`Ctrl`+`I`	Italic
`Ctrl`+`K`	Link	Selected text becomes the label, cursor lands in the brackets
`Tab`	Indent	Two spaces — inside a list this nests the item
`Shift`+`Tab`	Outdent
`Enter` in a list	Continues it	The next bullet or number is written for you; an empty item ends the list

On a Mac, Cmd in place of Ctrl.

What the document check catches

These are the errors that survive proofreading, because the source looks correct and only the rendered output is wrong:

Problem	What it renders as	Why it survives review
Empty link — `[text]()`	A link that goes nowhere	It still looks like a link. You only find it by clicking
Unclosed code fence	Everything after it becomes code	Obvious in the preview, invisible in the source
Skipped heading level — H2 then H4	Renders fine	Breaks screen-reader navigation and document outlines
Table without a separator	Plain text with pipes	Easy to miss when the row itself looks right
Image with no alt text	Renders fine	Invisible until someone using a screen reader hits it
Trailing spaces	An unintended line break	Whitespace is not visible

Where drafts are stored

In this browser, on this device, and nowhere else. No account, no server, no sync — which has a trade-off worth stating plainly:

	This editor	A cloud editor
Survives a refresh	Yes	Yes
Available on another device	No	Yes
Readable by anyone else	No — it never leaves the machine	Whoever runs the service, in principle
Survives clearing site data	No	Yes
Needs an account	No	Usually

Download anything you would be upset to lose. A local draft protects you from a refresh or a closed tab, not from clearing site data, a private window ending, or a different computer. For a long piece, press Download every so often — the file is yours and this page is not a filing cabinet.

Common mistakes

One blank line where two are needed. Markdown ends a paragraph on a blank line. A heading, list or table pressed against the paragraph above it often will not render — and the source looks perfectly reasonable, which is why this is the most common Markdown bug there is.

Assuming every renderer is the same. Task lists, strikethrough, tables and footnotes are extensions, not part of the original specification. GitHub supports all of them; a minimal renderer may support none. The preview here follows the GitHub-flavoured conventions, which is what most places use — but check your destination before relying on a footnote.

Writing an H1 in a document that already has a title. A README, a blog post or a wiki page usually supplies its own H1 from the filename or the post title. Adding another puts two H1s on the page, which confuses outline tools and search engines. Start at H2 unless the file is genuinely standing alone.

Frequently asked questions

Is my writing uploaded anywhere?

No. The draft is stored in this browser on this device and never transmitted — there is no account and no server to send it to. You can confirm it in the network panel of developer tools, which shows no request while you type.

Will my draft still be here tomorrow?

In the same browser on the same device, yes. It will not survive clearing site data, a private window closing, or moving to another machine. Download anything you would be upset to lose — a local draft protects against a refresh, not against everything.

Which shortcuts work?

Ctrl+B for bold, Ctrl+I for italic, Ctrl+K for a link, Tab and Shift+Tab to indent and outdent, and Enter to continue a list. Cmd instead of Ctrl on a Mac. Pressing Enter on an empty list item ends the list, which is the behaviour every other editor has.

What is the document check looking for?

Errors that survive proofreading because the source looks correct: links with no target, code fences left open, headings that skip a level, tables missing their separator row, images without alt text, and trailing spaces that create an unintended line break.

Does the preview match GitHub?

It follows the same conventions — tables, task lists, strikethrough and fenced code all render as GitHub renders them. It is not a byte-for-byte reimplementation of their parser, so treat it as a close preview rather than a guarantee for anything unusual.

Can I get HTML out instead?

Yes — Copy HTML copies the rendered markup rather than the source. For a PDF, the Markdown to PDF converter uses your browser’s own print engine.

Why did my heading not render?

Almost always a missing blank line above it. Markdown ends a paragraph on a blank line, so a heading pressed against the text above becomes part of that paragraph. The same applies to lists and tables, and it is the most common Markdown bug there is.

Related tools

See the full list of Generators, or try:

Markdown to PDF — turn the finished piece into a file
Markdown Table Generator — paste a table from Excel
HTML to Markdown — paste from Word, Docs or a web page
PDF to Markdown — the other direction, in your browser
Word Counter — length, reading time and density

Markdown Editor: Live Preview, Shortcuts, Autosave