How to open and edit a .md file
Someone sent you a file ending in .md and asked you to change something in it. Open it in Notepad and you get a wall of hash signs, asterisks and vertical bars, with no clue which of them are safe to touch. In the editor on this site the same file looks like an ordinary document.
- Click Open and pick the file. You can also drag it into the window.
- Edit it the way you would in Word. The buttons at the top make headings, bold text, lists, links and tables. Tables stay tables: click a cell and type.
- Click Save and send the file back.
Need a new document instead? New clears the page, you write as in any editor, and Save gives you a ready .md file.
No sign-up, nothing to install, free.
What Markdown is
Markdown is a way to format text with plain characters. A hash sign at the start of a line makes a heading, two asterisks around a word make it bold, a dash at the start of a line turns it into a list item. The file itself stays plain text: any program on any computer can open it, and version control shows exactly which word changed.
That is why developers write documentation, GitHub READMEs, specifications and notes in Obsidian in Markdown. For them it is convenient. For someone seeing the syntax for the first time it is not: delete one asterisk too many and the formatting falls apart.
In this editor's visual mode the markup is hidden. It appears only where your cursor is, in case you need to fix it. If you prefer the raw text, there are Source and Split modes.
What opens a .md file
On a computer, any text editor will: Notepad on Windows, TextEdit on a Mac. You will see the markup as it is, though. To see the document, open the file in the editor, right in your browser.
Phones are trickier. iPhone and Android either show a .md file as raw text or refuse to open it. Go to md.vv-dev.ru/en in your phone's browser, tap Open and choose the file from Files, Downloads or a chat attachment.
Saving and sending the file back
What Save does depends on your browser.
Chrome and Edge on a computer write the changes straight into the file you opened. The browser asks for permission once.
Safari and Firefox cannot do that. They put the edited file in your Downloads folder under its original name. That is the one to send back.
On iPhone and Android there is a Share button: the file goes straight to a messenger, email or Files. On a phone, that is the shortest way back to the sender.
In every browser the file keeps its name. Wherever you did not edit, the file is byte-for-byte identical to the original: the editor does not rewrite someone else's markup, indentation or line endings.
Markdown cheat sheet
If you want to type markup by hand, or make sense of what you see in Source mode:
| You type | You get |
|---|---|
# Heading | a top-level heading; ## and ### are smaller |
**bold** | bold |
*italic* | italic |
~~strikethrough~~ | strikethrough |
- item | a bulleted list item |
1. item | a numbered list item |
- [ ] task | a line with a checkbox |
[text](https://address) | a link |
 | an image |
> quote | a quote |
`code` | inline code |
| A | B | | a table row |
Leave an empty line between paragraphs. Without it, two lines run together into one.
Why your file stays on your device
The whole editor runs in your browser. The file is read from your disk and written back there; neither the text nor the file name is sent to any server. Documents people send around often contain phone numbers, addresses and contract figures, and there is no reason for them to pass through someone else's server.
The site counts only visits and actions: a file was opened, edited, saved, the mode switched, the help opened, an error happened. No cookies, no file names, no text, no IP addresses. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, or you tick “Don't count my visits” in the help, not even that.
Until you save, the editor keeps a draft in your browser's storage. Close the tab by accident, come back, and it offers to restore your changes. Saving deletes the draft. Keep that in mind on a shared computer: an unsaved draft is visible to the next person who opens the site in the same browser.
An image linked from the internet is loaded by your browser from its own site, and that site sees your IP address. It is not told which page you are on.
After the first visit the editor also works offline. In Chrome on a computer you can install it as an app.
Questions
There is a box with a file name instead of a picture
The image is linked as a separate file next to the document, for example img/diagram.png. Your browser only has the .md itself, so the editor shows the path instead. The link in the text stays as it was, and the sender will still see the picture.
Can I paste a screenshot?
Yes, straight from the clipboard. The editor shrinks it and embeds it in the file, so the document stays a single file. GitHub does not display embedded images, so if the file is going there, attach the picture separately.
Can I open several files at once?
One document per tab. For a second one, open the site in another tab.
I broke something
⌘Z on a Mac or Ctrl+Z on Windows undoes changes one by one. Until you click Save, the original file on your disk is untouched.