LinkedIn Formatter

Format LinkedIn posts with Unicode styles from a live preview beside your editor.

A LinkedIn post lives in a plain file ending in .linkedin. Open one and a LinkedIn card renders beside the editor, updating as the text changes. Style it by selecting text in the card and clicking: bold, italic, 𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚜𝚙𝚊𝚌𝚎, 𝓈𝒸𝓇𝒾𝓅𝓉 and more.

The styling is real Unicode characters, not markup. LinkedIn's composer has no formatting controls, so **bold** pastes in as literal asterisks; the only thing that survives is different code points. That is what this produces, which is why what you see in the card is exactly what posts. Limits are LinkedIn's: 3,000 characters, and roughly the first 210 show before the "see more" fold.

Because the formatting is the text, an AI CLI and a human can work on the same .linkedin file with no sync step and no markup layer to reconcile. Ask your assistant for a post and have it saved with that extension, and the preview picks it up automatically.

Quick start

1. Install the extension.
2. Get a file ending in .linkedin open: create one yourself, or ask your AI assistant to save the draft with that extension. The preview opens automatically beside it, in the same window.
3. Write or refine the post in the editor. The card updates on every keystroke.
4. Select text in the preview card and use the toolbar: pick a font family, toggle B / I, add strikethrough or underline, insert emoji. Or use the keyboard shortcuts right in the editor.
5. Run LinkedIn: Copy Formatted Post and paste into LinkedIn. Done.

Editing from the preview

The rendered card is a full editor. Click anywhere in it and type: every keystroke lands in the file as real Unicode, already in the style of the text around it. It follows word-processor conventions throughout - styles continue as you type, Enter carries formatting into the new paragraph, a family or Bold picked at the caret latches for the next thing you type, Ctrl+Z takes back whole words, arrows and Home/End navigate the wrapped card, and typing over a selection replaces it in one step. Uppercase-only families fold what you type ('a' in Squared becomes 🄰).

With text selected in the card you can also:

• Pick a font family from the dropdown (11 families). With a selection, it converts the selected text; without one, it sets the family your keyboard shortcuts act in.
• Toggle Bold and Italic. The buttons show a pressed state when the selection already carries the style, and disable when the chosen family has no such variant in Unicode. Mixed selections show a Mixed label and still toggle each character in its own family.
• Add strikethrough or underline, which layer on top of any letterform. The buttons show a pressed state when the selection already carries the mark, and disable on the boxed families (Squared, Circled, Fullwidth): no font on any platform renders combining marks over those glyphs, so the toolbar only offers what your readers can actually see.
• Insert emoji from the picker, at the caret - the picker opens beside the toolbar at any scroll position.
• Clear formatting back to plain text with one click.
• Place the cursor: click anywhere in the card and the editor cursor jumps to that exact spot.
• Undo and redo with the usual keys; they act on the real document.

Selections persist through all of it, so bold, then underline, then a family change is three clicks on one selection.

Styles

Styles with no digit coverage leave digits as plain ASCII. Single-case families fold letters into the case they cover ("hello" in Negative Squared becomes 🅷🅴🅻🅻🅾). Characters with no Unicode equivalent are left unchanged, never replaced with a lookalike.

Features

• Live LinkedIn-style preview: a faithful post card beside the editor, updating on every keystroke, including edits made by an AI CLI.
• Family + modifier toolbar: pick a font family, then toggle Bold or Italic within it. Buttons gray out only where Unicode genuinely has no variant; mixed selections show a Mixed state and still toggle per character.
• Selections that stay put: styled text remains selected, so stacking bold + underline + a family change is three clicks, not three re-drags.
• Character counter: live count against LinkedIn's 3,000 limit, counted the way LinkedIn actually counts (UTF-16 units), with a warning threshold.
• "See more" markers: optional cutoff lines at ~210 (desktop) and ~140 (mobile) characters, so you know what shows before the fold.
• Emoji picker: roughly 200 curated emoji with name search.
• Cursor sync: click in the card, the editor cursor follows.
• Four card palettes: Daylight, Midnight (LinkedIn dark), Dim, or Editor, which inherits your active VS Code theme (the default).
• Your name on the card: resolved from your git config, overridable in settings, so the mock reads like your actual post.

Commands

Keyboard shortcuts

Active only in .linkedin files; your keybindings elsewhere are untouched. Bold and italic act in the current font family (the preview's dropdown, else linkedinFormatter.defaultFamily).

Settings

Privacy and security

• Zero network egress. No HTTP requests of any kind. No telemetry, no analytics, no update checks, no CDN fonts. Conversion is deterministic local character mapping.
• Minimal file access. The file you opened, plus one read of ~/.gitconfig to show your name on the card. It is display-only, overridable, and it cannot leave your machine because nothing does.
• Untrusted workspaces fully supported. Nothing from the workspace is executed or trusted.
• Hardened webview. Strict Content Security Policy, per-load nonce, no unsafe-inline, no unsafe-eval.
• No accounts, no secrets, nothing stored.

Limitations

• Does not post to LinkedIn; output is clipboard only.
• Does not render Markdown; **bold** is literal text.
• No superscript/subscript (Unicode has no code points for several letters).
• Prose is authored in the editor pane; the preview is for styling and visual checking, not free typing.
• Screen readers spell out styled Unicode letter-by-letter, so use styling as seasoning, not the whole post.

Coming next

• Editing in the preview pane: type into the rendered card itself, not only the left editor. Text typed on the right lands in the file on the left, already in real Unicode.

Connect

Questions, bugs, ideas: reach me anywhere below.

Open source under MIT.