A VS Code extension that opens .md files in a rich-text visual editor — think Notion or Typora, but living right inside VS Code. No external apps, no browser tabs. Press Alt+M to toggle back to raw Markdown at any time.
How it works
Open any .md file and it loads in the visual editor automatically. Everything you type is saved as valid Markdown. Switch to source view and back without losing anything.
Visual → file: edits are serialized to Markdown and saved via the normal VS Code document API (Ctrl+S works as expected).
File → visual: external changes (git pull, another editor) are reflected live.
No lock-in: your files stay as plain .md — the extension is purely a view layer.
Type / to open the block-type menu (heading, list, code block, quote…)
Toolbar
One-click formatting bar above the editor
Toggle source
Button in the editor title bar or Alt+M to switch to/from raw Markdown
Side-by-side preview
Rendered Markdown preview next to the visual editor
Image drag & drop
Drag images into the editor or paste from clipboard (embedded as data URL)
Dark mode
Follows VS Code's active color theme automatically
Bidirectional sync
Live sync in both directions with loop-prevention
Getting started
Install the extension from the VS Code Marketplace.
Open any .md or .markdown file — it opens in the visual editor by default.
Start writing. Press Ctrl+S to save as usual.
To switch back to the plain text editor, click the </> Source button in the editor title bar or press Alt+M.
Switching the default editor
The extension sets itself as the default editor for *.md files. To change this:
Right-click a .md file → Open With… → choose Text Editor
Or add to your settings.json:
{
"workbench.editorAssociations": {
"*.md": "default" // use the built-in text editor
// "*.md": "markdownVisualEditor.editor" // use the visual editor
}
}
Keyboard shortcuts
Shortcut
Action
Alt+M
Toggle between visual and source editor
Ctrl+S
Save (works normally in both modes)
/
Open slash command menu (block types)
Known limitations
Images dropped or pasted into the editor are embedded as base64 data URLs directly in the Markdown file. This keeps things portable but increases file size. Saving to disk with a relative path is planned.
Tables and task lists are not yet supported in the visual editor (the underlying TipTap extensions are available and will be added).
