Skip to content
| Marketplace
Sign in
Visual Studio Code>Other>GitHub Flavored MarkdownNew to Visual Studio Code? Get it now.
GitHub Flavored Markdown

GitHub Flavored Markdown

ZiMing Liu

|
3 installs
| (1) | Free
Make VS Code Markdown Preview match GitHub as closely as possible.
Installation
Launch VS Code Quick Open (Ctrl+P), paste the following command, and press enter.
Copied to clipboard
More Info

简体中文

GitHub Markdown Preview

Make VS Code Markdown Preview match GitHub as closely as possible.

VS Code ^1.74.0 Nub Oxc License MIT

Why This Project

VS Code's built-in Markdown Preview is a general-purpose renderer, but what developers actually care about is how their documentation will look once it lands on GitHub. This project is not trying to create a GitHub-like theme. Its goal is to align VS Code preview output with GitHub's Markdown preview behavior and presentation as closely as possible.

That makes README writing, docs authoring, and general Markdown editing much more predictable: developers can edit and preview locally while seeing something close to the final result they expect on GitHub, instead of discovering layout or rendering mismatches only after pushing.

This project focuses on two practical outcomes:

  • Align the rendering, spacing, and visual details of GitHub Markdown instead of inventing a separate lookalike theme
  • Keep local preview and expected GitHub output as close as possible so documentation work needs less trial and error
  • Keep markdown-mermaid diagrams on a matching light or dark theme when Mermaid theme sync is enabled

Features

GitHub-Flavored Markdown

  • Task Lists — - [x] and - [ ] render as GitHub-style disabled checkboxes.
  • Footnotes — [^1] references with automatic numbering, backrefs, and a footnotes section at the bottom.
  • Alerts — [!NOTE], [!TIP], [!IMPORTANT], [!WARNING], and [!CAUTION] render with proper icons and styling.
  • Emoji Shortcodes — :rocket:, :+1:, :tada: and thousands more, including both Unicode emoji and image-based custom emoji from GitHub.
  • HTML Image Path Rewriting — absolute paths in HTML <img> tags (/path/to/img) are rewritten to relative paths (./path/to/img), so project-local images work correctly in VS Code's webview preview.

GitHub Themes

9 built-in GitHub themes, covering light, dark, dimmed, high contrast, and colorblind-friendly variants:

Light Dark
Light Dark
Light Protanopia & Deuteranopia Dark Protanopia & Deuteranopia
Light high contrast Dark high contrast
Light Tritanopia Dark dimmed
Dark Tritanopia

Two theme modes:

  • Single — always use one fixed theme.
  • System — follow the preview's light/dark color scheme, with separate themes for each.

Switch themes anytime via VS Code commands (Quick Pick) — no need to open settings.

Mermaid Diagrams

When githubMarkdown.mermaid.syncTheme is enabled, the extension updates the markdown-mermaid light/dark theme settings to match the active GitHub Markdown theme. It does not ship a Mermaid renderer or add a Mermaid dependency.

Related Information

  • Visual Studio Code's Markdown Support
  • Markdown Syntax Reference
  • Emoji Cheat Sheet

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and guidelines.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT open source license.

  • Contact us
  • Jobs
  • Privacy
  • Manage cookies
  • Terms of use
  • Trademarks
© 2026 Microsoft