Markdown Renderer

About

Read Markdown the way it was meant to look — no extra steps, no copy-pasting into a viewer.

Chrome shows .md and .markdown files as a wall of raw plain text. Markdown Renderer turns them into a clean, formatted page automatically, styled to look just like Markdown does on GitHub.

Open a Markdown file — from your own computer or from the web — and it simply renders. There is nothing to click and nothing to configure.

FEATURES • Automatic Rendering — Any .md or .markdown file renders on open. No button, no popup. • GitHub-Like Styling — Headings, tables, code blocks, blockquotes, and lists match the familiar GitHub look. • Local Files Supported — Works on file:// Markdown files on your own machine (see setup note below). • Light & Dark Mode — Follows your system theme automatically. • Fully Offline — All rendering happens on your device. The extension makes no network requests.

HOW TO USE

1. Install the extension.
2. Open any .md or .markdown file in Chrome — a local file or one hosted on the web.
The file renders automatically as formatted Markdown.
3. IMPORTANT — FOR LOCAL FILES To render Markdown files stored on your own computer, Chrome requires you to grant file access explicitly: go to chrome://extensions, click Details on Markdown Renderer, and turn on Allow access to file URLs. This is a Chrome setting, not something the extension can enable for you.  Markdown files opened from the web work without this step.

PRIVACY Markdown Renderer runs entirely on your local machine. It does not collect, track, store, or transmit any data, file contents, URLs, or browsing history. It makes no network requests of any kind. The Markdown you open is rendered in your browser and goes nowhere else.

PERMISSIONS • "Read and change your data on all websites" (content script match patterns) — Markdown files can live at any address, so the extension must be able to run on a page whose URL ends in .md or .markdown regardless of which site hosts it. It runs only on those pages, reads only the Markdown text already displayed there, and replaces it with the rendered version. • File access (optional, user-enabled) — Needed only to render Markdown files stored on your own computer.

OPEN SOURCE COMPONENTS Rendering uses marked (MIT), DOMPurify (Mozilla Public License 2.0 / Apache 2.0), and github-markdown-css (MIT), all bundled inside the extension package.

SUPPORT Found an issue or want to suggest a feature? Email us at [email protected]