Markdown PDF (Revived)

Install • What changed • Features • Settings • Requirements

Converts Markdown files to PDF or HTML from within VSCode. All rendering is local; no external servers, no telemetry, Chrome required.

What Changed in v2

This is a fork of yzane/vscode-markdown-pdf, which had no maintainer activity since late 2023. See CHANGELOG.md for the full list of changes and MIGRATION.md for upgrade instructions.

Removed: PlantUML (sent source to plantuml.com), PNG/JPEG export, Chromium auto-download, 10 settings.

Added: KaTeX math, DOMPurify sanitization (CVE-2024-7739), Mermaid async render fix, TypeScript rewrite, esbuild bundling (~11MB), footnotes, GitHub-style callouts, configurable export timeout.

Changed: Default margins, highlight theme (github.css), header/footer off by default.

Requirements

Chrome or Chromium must be installed. The extension detects it automatically at standard installation paths on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

To use a non-standard Chrome binary:

"markdown-pdf.executablePath": "/path/to/chrome"

Restart VSCode after changing this setting.

Getting Started

VS Code users can search for "Markdown PDF" in the Extensions panel or install from the VS Code Marketplace.

VSCodium users should install from Open VSX.

Manual install: Download the .vsix from the latest GitHub release, then run Extensions: Install from VSIX from the command palette.

Usage

Command Palette

1. Open a Markdown file.
2. Press F1 or Ctrl+Shift+P.
3. Type export and select a command:
   • Markdown PDF: Export (pdf)
   • Markdown PDF: Export (html)
   • Markdown PDF: Export (all: pdf, html)
   • Markdown PDF: Export (settings.json)

Right-click Menu

1. Open a Markdown file.
2. Right-click in the editor.
3. Select a command from the markdown-pdf group.

Auto-convert on Save

1. Add "markdown-pdf.convertOnSave": true to settings.json.
2. Restart VSCode.
3. Open a Markdown file. The extension converts it on each save.

To exclude specific files from auto-convert, add filename patterns to markdown-pdf.convertOnSaveExclude.

Features

• Syntax highlighting via highlight.js with 80+ themes
• Emoji support
• KaTeX math: $...$ for inline, $$...$$ for display
• Mermaid diagrams, rendered locally with no external calls
• File includes via :[text](https://github.com/AUAggy/markdown-pdf-revived/blob/HEAD/file.md) syntax (built-in, workspace-sandboxed)
• Custom div containers via markdown-it-container
• Checkbox and task list support via markdown-it-checkbox
• Footnotes via [^1] syntax
• GitHub-style callout blocks (> [!NOTE], > [!WARNING], etc.)
• DOMPurify sanitization of rendered HTML before PDF/HTML output

Settings

Output

Styles

markdown-pdf.allowPathsOutsideWorkspace

Allow images, includes, and stylesheets to reference files outside the workspace root. Disabled by default. Enable only if you have intentional cross-workspace references (e.g. a shared stylesheet at /projects/shared/styles.css).

Markdown

PDF

Header and footer templates support these tokens:

Mermaid Diagrams

Mermaid diagrams are rendered locally using the bundled mermaid.min.js. Before PDF capture, the extension waits for Mermaid's async SVG rendering to complete by polling for the data-processed attribute on each .mermaid element. This ensures diagrams appear in PDFs rather than as raw code blocks.

```mermaid
flowchart TD
    A[Start] --> B{Decision}
    B -->|Yes| C[Do the thing]
    B -->|No| D[Skip it]
    C --> E[End]
    D --> E
```

PlantUML has been removed. It sent diagram source to plantuml.com on each render. For migration examples and equivalent Mermaid syntax, see MIGRATION.md.

Custom Containers

The markdown-it-container plugin wraps content in named <div> elements. Style them with a custom CSS file.

Input:

::: warning
*here be dragons*
:::

Output:

<div class="warning">
<p><em>here be dragons</em></p>
</div>

File Includes

Includes insert the contents of another Markdown file at the include site. Paths are relative to the file containing the include directive.

Syntax: :[display text](https://github.com/AUAggy/markdown-pdf-revived/blob/HEAD/relative-path-to-file.md)

Example:

:[Plugins](https://github.com/AUAggy/markdown-pdf-revived/blob/HEAD/plugins/README.md)
:[Changelog](https://github.com/AUAggy/markdown-pdf-revived/blob/HEAD/CHANGELOG.md)

The output contains the rendered content of each included file in sequence.

Security note (v2.1.0+): File includes are now processed by the built-in inlineIncludesSecure function (replacing the markdown-it-include plugin). All included paths are validated against the workspace root, with a maximum include depth of 10 and per-branch cycle detection. Include paths that reference files outside the workspace root are blocked by default. To allow cross-workspace includes, set markdown-pdf.allowPathsOutsideWorkspace to true.

Page Breaks

Insert a page break with:

<div class="page"/>

Known Limitations

• Chrome or Chromium must be installed separately. The extension does not bundle or download a browser.
• Online CSS URLs (e.g., https://example.com/styles.css) do not resolve reliably in PDF output. Prefer local stylesheet paths.

License

MIT