Yes. The browser version is free to use and the Windows app is a free download. The source is on GitHub under the MIT license.

Do I need an account?

No. There is nothing to sign up for and no sign-in.

What happens to the text I paste?

The browser sends it to the server, which renders it and sends HTML back. It is held in memory for the length of that request and never written to disk. The log line for a render records how many characters went in, how many came back and how long it took, and nothing else. A request that is refused logs why, and nothing more.

Can I open a file instead of pasting?

Yes. The reader takes a .md, .markdown or .txt file from the Open button or from a drop onto the window. The browser reads the file itself; the text then goes to the server to be rendered, the same way pasted text does.

About MdReader — what it renders, and where your text goes

MdReader renders Markdown in a browser tab and in a Windows app. Both use the same renderer, so a document looks the same in either one.

What it does

MdReader turns Markdown into the page GitHub would show you. Headings, pipe tables, task lists, footnotes, alert blocks, syntax-highlighted code, Mermaid diagrams and KaTeX math all render.

The reader itself is at the root of this site. Paste a document, or open a .md file from your disk, and read it. There is no account, and nothing is installed to do it.

A rendered Markdown document with coloured headings, inline code and a highlighted phrase, beside a contents panel listing its sections. — The reader with a document open and its contents panel beside it.

Where your text goes

The browser sends what you paste to the server, the server renders it, sends the HTML back, and drops it. Nothing is written to disk. The one log line a successful render leaves behind records how many characters came in, how many came back, and how long it took. No part of the document goes into it.

Your browser keeps your open tabs in local storage, so they are still there when you come back. That copy never leaves your machine, and clearing site data removes it.

If you would rather nothing left your machine at all, the Windows app renders on your own machine. The only requests MdReader makes are for images a document links to, the same as a browser would.

Raw HTML is kept, and then cleaned

Real READMEs use HTML: a logo centred with <p align="center">, a collapsed section in <details>, keys in <kbd>, a light and dark logo pair in <picture>. Refusing raw HTML would break a lot of documents that are otherwise fine, so MdReader keeps it and puts the whole rendered page through an allow-list sanitizer afterwards.

Nothing that can run or navigate survives that: script, style, iframe, object, form, every on* attribute, javascript: in a link. What is left still looks the way the author meant it to. The browser's content security policy blocks script from the document as a second layer, so a miss in the sanitizer would not get to run either.

The desktop app

MdReader started as a Windows app, and that is still where it does the most. Double-click a .md file and it opens in a tab. A file reloads when you save it, so the window can sit beside your editor. Tabs come back the next time you open it. There is a contents panel you can resize, filter and sort, and a split view with the source on one side. It also has find, zoom, printing and PDF export.

The MdReader window on Windows, with two file tabs, a toolbar, a contents panel and a rendered document. — Two files open in tabs. The contents panel on the left is built from the document's headings.

The download costs nothing. The installer is not signed yet, so Windows shows a SmartScreen warning the first time you run it: choose "More info", then "Run anyway".

The same renderer on both sides

The browser version and the app share the parser, the sanitizer, the stylesheet and the JavaScript that draws diagrams and typesets math. The only difference is where the render happens. In the app it is a call inside the process; on the web it is one request to the server. That is why a document you read here is a fair preview of what the app will show, and why a bug fixed in one is fixed in the other.

The pages around it

The pages listed below each take one thing MdReader does and show it working: a sample document in an editor, already rendered beside it, and notes on where the edges are. They are Markdown files put through the same renderer as everything else, so if the renderer breaks they say so on every URL rather than only in a test.

About MdReader