What formatting gets removed?

Heading hashes, bold and italic markers, inline code backticks, fenced code blocks, blockquote arrows, horizontal rules, and list bullets. What remains is the readable text content.

How are links handled?

You choose. The default keeps the visible text and appends the URL in parentheses; you can also keep just the link text or output only the bare URL, depending on where the text is going.

Does it keep my paragraph breaks?

Yes. Blank lines between paragraphs are preserved so the structure reads naturally, and list items are turned into clean lines rather than being mashed together.

What happens to code blocks?

Fenced code blocks keep their inner lines but lose the triple-backtick fences, so the code is preserved as plain text without the markdown wrapper.

When would I use this over the HTML converter?

Use plain text when the destination cannot render formatting at all — a plain-text email, an SMS, a CSV cell, a code comment, or a form field. Use the HTML converter when the destination is a web page or rich editor.

What is the Markdown → Plain Text Converter?

Removes headers, bold, italics, links, code fences, blockquotes, and list markers from markdown, leaving clean readable plain text suitable for emails, plain-text fields, or pasting into documents. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

Markdown → Plain Text Converter

Name: Markdown → Plain Text Converter
Creator: Gera Tools
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Markdown to clean prose

Sometimes you don’t want the formatting at all. You’re pasting an LLM answer into a plain-text email, an SMS, a form field, or a code comment — somewhere **bold** and ## headings would show up as literal symbols. This converter strips every markdown marker and leaves you with clean, readable prose that keeps its paragraph structure.

How it works

The converter walks the markdown and removes formatting tokens while keeping content: heading hashes drop, ** and * and ` markers are peeled away, blockquote > arrows and list bullets become plain lines, and code fences are removed while their inner lines stay. Links are the one judgment call, so you choose how to render them.

## Title              ->  Title
- **fast** setup      ->  fast setup
[docs](http://x.com)  ->  docs (http://x.com)
`code snippet`        ->  code snippet
> blockquote text     ->  blockquote text

What gets stripped and what survives

Markdown element	What happens
`## Heading`	Hash symbols removed; heading text kept on its own line
`bold` / `italic`	Asterisks removed; text kept
`_italic_`	Underscores removed; text kept
`inline code`	Backticks removed; code text kept
```fenced block```	Fences removed; inner lines kept as plain text
`> blockquote`	`>` removed; text kept as a plain line
`- bullet` / `* bullet`	Bullet markers removed; text kept as a plain line
`1. numbered item`	Number and period removed; text kept
`[text](url)`	Configurable: text only, text (url), or just url
`![alt](img-url)`	Image removed (cannot render in plain text)
`---` horizontal rule	Removed entirely
Blank lines between paragraphs	Preserved

When to use each link style

text (url) — best for plain-text emails where you want the reader to see both the label and the destination. For example, official documentation (https://example.com).
text only — best for SMS, form fields, or any destination where raw URLs look noisy or break layout.
url only — best when you are processing text programmatically and need the raw links extracted.

Typical use cases

Pasting a model response into an email. Copy the LLM output, paste it into this tool, and paste the plain result into your email client. The heading hierarchy becomes readable bold-on-its-own-line text without markdown hash symbols cluttering the message.

Inserting into a CRM or ticketing system. Many support tools and CRMs do not render markdown, so a pasted response with ** markers looks broken. Strip first, then paste.

Writing code comments. Documentation you wrote in markdown for a README often needs to become a docstring or a block comment. Stripping removes the markdown so the comment reads as plain prose.

Sending to a low-tech stakeholder. Not everyone reads markdown. Clean prose is easier to share in a message or a PDF.

Tips

For email, the default “text (url)” link style keeps URLs visible without the markdown brackets. If the text is going somewhere truly minimal, choose “text only” to drop URLs entirely. To also remove AI preambles (“Certainly! Here’s…”) and sign-offs (“I hope this helps!”), run the output through the AI Boilerplate Stripper after stripping formatting.