pdfMB

PDF to Markdown

Turn a PDF into Markdown with headings, lists, tables and links. Copy it or download a .md file. Your file stays on this device.

  • No uploadYour file stays on this device.
  • Your original stays as it isYou download a new copy. Your file is never changed.
  • Free, no sign-upNo account and no daily limit.

What happens to your file

Everything below happens inside your browser, on your own device. The PDF is not uploaded, so nobody else, including us, can see it.

  1. Your browser opens the PDF with pdf.js, the PDF viewer built into Firefox, and reads every piece of text with its position, font, size, bold and italic.
  2. Pieces of text on the same line are joined into lines, and lines into paragraphs. Words split with a hyphen at the end of a line are joined back together.
  3. Pages with two or three columns are read one column at a time, so sentences from different columns are not mixed line by line.
  4. Text that is clearly larger than the body text becomes a heading: # for the title, ## and ### for sections. Short bold lines become headings too.
  5. Lines that start with a bullet or a number become Markdown lists. Tables drawn with lines, and rows lined up with tabs, become Markdown tables with one row per line.
  6. Bold and italic text is kept as **bold** and *italic*. Web links in the PDF become [text](address) links on the words they cover.
  7. Characters that mean something in Markdown, such as * _ # and [, are escaped with a backslash, so they show up as written instead of turning into formatting.
  8. Some PDFs, often ones saved from a web browser, mark certain characters as “no character”. In Thai these are usually tone marks above vowels. pdfMB rebuilds them from the fonts inside your file.
  9. Pages without text, such as scans, can be read with the same OCR engine as OCR PDF. Only the language data is downloaded, once.
  10. The .md or .txt file is put together on your device as UTF-8 text and saved straight to your downloads, or copied to your clipboard.
In short
  1. Choose a PDF
  2. Press “Convert to Markdown”
  3. Check the preview
  4. Copy it or download the .md file

How to convert a PDF to Markdown

  1. Choose a PDF or drop it on the box. pdfMB reads every page and tells you whether any pages are scans without text.
  2. If there are scanned pages, leave “Read the text of scanned pages (OCR)” on and pick the language of the document.
  3. Press “Convert to Markdown”. A bar shows how far it has got.
  4. Look over the preview. You can switch to plain text, keep or remove page headers and footers, and mark where pages start. The preview updates straight away.
  5. Press “Copy all” to paste it somewhere else, or download the .md file.

Why Markdown

Markdown is plain text with a few marks for structure: # for headings, - for lists, | for tables. It opens in any text editor and stays readable even without formatting.

Note apps such as Obsidian and Notion, wikis, GitHub and most documentation tools read Markdown directly, so headings and tables arrive as headings and tables.

AI chat tools and search indexes work better with Markdown than with raw PDF text, because the headings and tables tell them how the document is organised. You can paste the result straight into a chat.

When people use it

Notes and wikis

Bring a report, manual or paper into Obsidian, Notion, a wiki or a GitHub README with its headings, lists and tables intact.

AI chats

Paste a long PDF into an AI chat as Markdown, so it can see the sections and tables instead of a wall of text.

Editing and quoting

Get the text out of a PDF to rewrite, translate or quote it, without fixing broken lines by hand.

Thai documents

Convert Thai PDFs, including ones saved from a web browser, without losing tone marks.

What it can’t do

  • Pictures, charts and drawings are not included. Markdown keeps text only. Use PDF to JPG to save the pictures.
  • Equations come out as plain text, with superscripts and subscripts as <sup> and <sub>.
  • Merged table cells are split into normal cells, and tables without any lines or tab stops come out as paragraphs.
  • Headings are found from the size and weight of the text, so a document that uses the same font for everything may get fewer headings.
  • Links inside the document, such as a table of contents, are not kept. Only links to web pages and email addresses are.
  • Right-to-left languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, have not been tested enough yet. Check the result carefully.
  • Password-protected PDFs, and PDFs whose owner has blocked copying, can’t be converted.

Questions about converting PDF to Markdown

Is my PDF uploaded?

No. pdfMB converts the file inside your browser, and it never leaves your device. You can check this in your browser’s network tools.

Which Markdown does it write?

CommonMark with GitHub-style tables, which GitHub, Obsidian, VS Code, most wikis and static site tools all read. Bold, italic, links and lists use the standard marks.

Can I get plain text instead?

Yes. Switch the format to plain text after converting, or use PDF to Text. You get the same paragraphs without any Markdown marks, and tables become rows of text separated by tabs.

Does it keep Thai tone marks?

Yes. pdfMB also restores tone marks that some PDFs mark as “no character”. In our test all 4,911 tone marks of a 35-page Thai article came through.

Can it convert a scanned PDF?

Yes. Turn on OCR, pick the language, and the text of the scanned pages becomes paragraphs. Check the result, because OCR can misread names and numbers.

Why are some page numbers or headers missing?

Lines that repeat at the top or bottom of most pages, and bare page numbers, are removed by default so they don’t break up the text. Untick the option to keep them.