Markdown PDF(m) downloads a Chromium/Chrome build automatically the first time you export a document. The download is large (~170 MB macOS, ~282 MB Linux, ~280 MB Windows), so prefetching it ahead of a release can save time for your team.
Usage
Command Palette
- Open the Markdown file
- Press
F1 or Ctrl+Shift+P
- Type
export and select below
markdown-pdf: Export (settings.json)markdown-pdf: Export (pdf)markdown-pdf: Export (html)markdown-pdf: Export (png)markdown-pdf: Export (jpeg)markdown-pdf: Export (all: pdf, html, png, jpeg)
markdown-pdf: Install configured browser
- Open the Markdown file
- Right click and select below
markdown-pdf: Export (settings.json)markdown-pdf: Export (pdf)markdown-pdf: Export (html)markdown-pdf: Export (png)markdown-pdf: Export (jpeg)markdown-pdf: Export (all: pdf, html, png, jpeg)
Auto convert
- Add
"markdown-pdf.convertOnSave": true option to settings.json
- Restart Visual Studio Code
- Open the Markdown file
- Auto convert on save
Use Markdown PDF: Install configured browser whenever you change the markdown-pdf.browser.* settings or want to ensure an offline machine already has the right Chromium/Chrome build. The command downloads the requested browser into the configured cache directory and reports progress in the status bar. Exports will reuse the cached build, so no extra download is required when you later run an export command.
Extension Settings
Visual Studio Code User and Workspace Settings
- Select File > Preferences > UserSettings or Workspace Settings
- Find markdown-pdf settings in the Default Settings
- Copy
markdown-pdf.* settings
- Paste to the settings.json, and change the value
Options
List
Save options
markdown-pdf.type
- Output format: pdf, html, png, jpeg
- Multiple output formats support
- Default: pdf
"markdown-pdf.type": [
"pdf",
"html",
"png",
"jpeg"
],
markdown-pdf.convertOnSave
- Enable Auto convert on save
- boolean. Default: false
- To apply the settings, you need to restart Visual Studio Code
markdown-pdf.convertOnSaveExclude
- Excluded file name of convertOnSave option
"markdown-pdf.convertOnSaveExclude": [
"^work",
"work.md$",
"work|test",
"[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-work",
"work\\test" // All '\' need to be written as '\\' (Windows)
],
markdown-pdf.outputDirectory
- Output Directory
- All
\ need to be written as \\ (Windows)
"markdown-pdf.outputDirectory": "C:\\work\\output",
- Relative path
- If you open the
Markdown file, it will be interpreted as a relative path from the file
- If you open a
folder, it will be interpreted as a relative path from the root folder
- If you open the
workspace, it will be interpreted as a relative path from the each root folder
"markdown-pdf.outputDirectory": "output",
- Relative path (home directory)
- If path starts with
~, it will be interpreted as a relative path from the home directory
"markdown-pdf.outputDirectory": "~/output",
- If you set a directory with a
relative path, it will be created if the directory does not exist
- If you set a directory with an
absolute path, an error occurs if the directory does not exist
markdown-pdf.outputDirectoryRelativePathFile
- If
markdown-pdf.outputDirectoryRelativePathFile option is set to true, the relative path set with markdown-pdf.outputDirectory is interpreted as relative from the file
- It can be used to avoid relative paths from folders and workspaces
- boolean. Default: false
Styles options
markdown-pdf.styles
- A list of local paths to the stylesheets to use from the markdown-pdf
- If the file does not exist, it will be skipped
- All
\ need to be written as \\ (Windows)
"markdown-pdf.styles": [
"C:\\Users\\<USERNAME>\\Documents\\markdown-pdf.css",
"/home/<USERNAME>/settings/markdown-pdf.css",
],
- Relative path
- If you open the
Markdown file, it will be interpreted as a relative path from the file
- If you open a
folder, it will be interpreted as a relative path from the root folder
- If you open the
workspace, it will be interpreted as a relative path from the each root folder
"markdown-pdf.styles": [
"markdown-pdf.css",
],
- Relative path (home directory)
- If path starts with
~, it will be interpreted as a relative path from the home directory
"markdown-pdf.styles": [
"~/.config/Code/User/markdown-pdf.css"
],
- Online CSS (https://xxx/xxx.css) is applied correctly for JPG and PNG, but problems occur with PDF #67
"markdown-pdf.styles": [
"https://xxx/markdown-pdf.css"
],
markdown-pdf.stylesRelativePathFile
- If
markdown-pdf.stylesRelativePathFile option is set to true, the relative path set with markdown-pdf.styles is interpreted as relative from the file
- It can be used to avoid relative paths from folders and workspaces
- boolean. Default: false
markdown-pdf.includeDefaultStyles
- Enable the inclusion of default Markdown styles (VSCode, markdown-pdf)
- boolean. Default: true
Syntax highlight options
markdown-pdf.highlight
- Enable Syntax highlighting
- boolean. Default: true
markdown-pdf.highlightStyle
"markdown-pdf.highlightStyle": "github.css",
Markdown options
markdown-pdf.breaks
- Enable line breaks
- boolean. Default: false
Emoji options
markdown-pdf.emoji
Configuration options
markdown-pdf.executablePath
- Path to a Chromium or Chrome executable to run instead of the bundled Chromium
- All
\ need to be written as \\ (Windows)
- To apply the settings, you need to restart Visual Studio Code
"markdown-pdf.executablePath": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe"
markdown-pdf.browser.name
- Browser flavor that should be installed when you run
Markdown PDF: Install configured browser
- Allowed values:
chrome, chromium, chrome-headless-shell
- Default:
chrome
"markdown-pdf.browser.name": "chromium"
markdown-pdf.browser.version
- Optional pinned version string (for example
123.0.6312.86)
- Takes precedence over
markdown-pdf.browser.channel when both are set
- Leave empty to let Puppeteer resolve the latest version for the selected channel
"markdown-pdf.browser.version": "129.0.6668.58"
markdown-pdf.browser.channel
- Channel to track when no explicit version is provided (
stable, beta, dev, canary)
- Useful for staying on a moving stream without editing the version number each time
"markdown-pdf.browser.channel": "beta"
markdown-pdf.browser.puppeteerCore
- Chooses which Puppeteer runtime powers conversions
modern: uses puppeteer-core@24.x (Chrome 120+)legacy-v2: uses puppeteer-core@2.1.1 for older environments that still require the v2 protocol- Default:
modern
"markdown-pdf.browser.puppeteerCore": "legacy-v2"
markdown-pdf.browser.cacheDir
- Directory where downloaded browsers should live; defaults to
~/.cache/markdown-pdf-m
- Point this to a shared folder to reuse the same build across multiple workspaces or CI runs
"markdown-pdf.browser.cacheDir": "D:/browsers/markdown-pdf"
Common Options
markdown-pdf.scale
- Scale of the page rendering
- number. default: 1
"markdown-pdf.scale": 1
PDF options
- Enables header and footer display
- boolean. Default: true
- Activating this option will display both the header and footer
- If you wish to display only one of them, remove the value for the other
- To hide the header
"markdown-pdf.headerTemplate": "",
- To hide the footer
"markdown-pdf.footerTemplate": "",
- Specifies the HTML template for outputting the header
- To use this option, you must set
markdown-pdf.displayHeaderFooter to true
<span class='date'></span> : formatted print date. The format depends on the environment<span class='title'></span> : markdown file name<span class='url'></span> : markdown full path name<span class='pageNumber'></span> : current page number<span class='totalPages'></span> : total pages in the document%%ISO-DATETIME%% : current date and time in ISO-based format (YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss)%%ISO-DATE%% : current date in ISO-based format (YYYY-MM-DD)%%ISO-TIME%% : current time in ISO-based format (hh:mm:ss)- Default (version 1.5.0 and later): Displays the Markdown file name and the date using
%%ISO-DATE%%
"markdown-pdf.headerTemplate": "<div style=\"font-size: 9px; margin-left: 1cm;\"> <span class='title'></span></div> <div style=\"font-size: 9px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 1cm; \">%%ISO-DATE%%</div>",
- Default (version 1.4.4 and earlier): Displays the Markdown file name and the date using
<span class='date'></span>
"markdown-pdf.headerTemplate": "<div style=\"font-size: 9px; margin-left: 1cm;\"> <span class='title'></span></div> <div style=\"font-size: 9px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 1cm; \"> <span class='date'></span></div>",
markdown-pdf.printBackground
- Print background graphics
- boolean. Default: true
markdown-pdf.orientation
- Paper orientation
- portrait or landscape
- Default: portrait
- Paper ranges to print, e.g., '1-5, 8, 11-13'
- Default: all pages
"markdown-pdf.pageRanges": "1,4-",
- Paper format
- Letter, Legal, Tabloid, Ledger, A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6
- Default: A4
"markdown-pdf.format": "A4",
markdown-pdf.width
markdown-pdf.height
- Paper width / height, accepts values labeled with units(mm, cm, in, px)
- If it is set, it overrides the markdown-pdf.format option
"markdown-pdf.width": "10cm",
"markdown-pdf.height": "20cm",
markdown-pdf.margin.top
markdown-pdf.margin.bottom
markdown-pdf.margin.right
markdown-pdf.margin.left
- Paper margins.units(mm, cm, in, px)
"markdown-pdf.margin.top": "1.5cm",
"markdown-pdf.margin.bottom": "1cm",
"markdown-pdf.margin.right": "1cm",
"markdown-pdf.margin.left": "1cm",
PNG, JPEG options
markdown-pdf.quality
- jpeg only. The quality of the image, between 0-100. Not applicable to png images
"markdown-pdf.quality": 100,
markdown-pdf.clip.x
markdown-pdf.clip.y
markdown-pdf.clip.width
markdown-pdf.clip.height
- An object which specifies clipping region of the page
- number
// x-coordinate of top-left corner of clip area
"markdown-pdf.clip.x": 0,
// y-coordinate of top-left corner of clip area
"markdown-pdf.clip.y": 0,
// width of clipping area
"markdown-pdf.clip.width": 1000,
// height of clipping area
"markdown-pdf.clip.height": 1000,
markdown-pdf.omitBackground
- Hides default white background and allows capturing screenshots with transparency
- boolean. Default: false
PlantUML options
markdown-pdf.plantumlOpenMarker
- Oppening delimiter used for the plantuml parser.
- Default: @startuml
markdown-pdf.plantumlCloseMarker
- Closing delimiter used for the plantuml parser.
- Default: @enduml
markdown-pdf.plantumlServer
markdown-it-include options
markdown-pdf.markdown-it-include.enable
- Enable markdown-it-include.
- boolean. Default: true
mermaid options
markdown-pdf.mermaidServer
FAQ
How can I change emoji size ?
- Add the following to your stylesheet which was specified in the markdown-pdf.styles
.emoji {
height: 2em;
}
Auto guess encoding of files
Using files.autoGuessEncoding option of the Visual Studio Code is useful because it automatically guesses the character code. See files.autoGuessEncoding
"files.autoGuessEncoding": true,
Output directory
If you always want to output to the relative path directory from the Markdown file.
For example, to output to the "output" directory in the same directory as the Markdown file, set it as follows.
"markdown-pdf.outputDirectory" : "output",
"markdown-pdf.outputDirectoryRelativePathFile": true,
Page Break
Please use the following to insert a page break.
<div class="page"/>
Known Issues
markdown-pdf.styles option
- Online CSS (https://xxx/xxx.css) is applied correctly for JPG and PNG, but problems occur with PDF. #67
0.2.1 (2025/11/16)
- Add
Markdown PDF: Install configured browser command to pre-download the browser defined in your settings
- Introduce the
markdown-pdf.browser.* settings family to pin the browser flavor, build, cache directory, or Puppeteer runtime
0.2.0 (2025/XX/XX)
yzane's 1.5.0 (2023/09/08)
- Improve: The default date format for headers and footers has been changed to the ISO-based format (YYYY-MM-DD).
- Support different date formats in templates #197
- Improve: Avoid TimeoutError: Navigation timeout of 30000 ms exceeded and TimeoutError: waiting for Page.printToPDF failed: timeout 30000ms exceeded #266
- Fix: Fix description of outputDirectoryRelativePathFile #238
- README
- Add: Specification Changes
- Fix: Broken link
License
MIT
Special thanks
and
