Markdown Support for Visual Studio Code

All you need for Markdown (keyboard shortcuts, table of contents, auto preview and more).

Note: VS Code has basic Markdown support out-of-the-box (e.g, Markdown preview), please see the official documentation for more information.

Table of Contents

• Features
  • Keyboard shortcuts
  • Table of contents
  • List editing
  • Print Markdown to HTML
  • GitHub Flavored Markdown
  • Math
  • Auto completions
  • Others
• Available Commands
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Supported Settings
• FAQ
  • Q: Error "command 'markdown.extension.onXXXKey' not found"
  • Q: Which Markdown syntax is supported?
  • Q: This extension has overridden some of my key bindings (e.g. Ctrl + B, Alt + C)
  • Q: The extension is unresponsive, causing lag etc. (performance issues)
• Changelog
• Latest Development Build
• Contributing
• Related

Features

Keyboard shortcuts

(Typo: multiple words)

See full key binding list in the keyboard shortcuts section

Table of contents

• Run command "Create Table of Contents" (in the VS Code Command Palette) to insert a new table of contents.

• The TOC is automatically updated on file save by default. To disable, please change the toc.updateOnSave option.

• The indentation type (tab or spaces) of TOC can be configured per file. Find the setting in the right bottom corner of VS Code's status bar.

  Note: Be sure to also check the list.indentationSize option.

• To make TOC compatible with GitHub or GitLab, set option slugifyMode accordingly

• Three ways to control which headings are present in the TOC:

  Click to expand

  1. Add <!-- omit from toc --> at the end of a heading to ignore it in TOC
     (It can also be placed above a heading)

  2. Use toc.levels setting.

  3. You can also use the toc.omittedFromToc setting to omit some headings (and their subheadings) from TOC:

     // In your settings.json
     "markdown.extension.toc.omittedFromToc": {
       // Use a path relative to your workspace.
       "README.md": [
           "# Introduction",
           "## Also omitted",
       ],
       // Or an absolute path for standalone files.
       "/home/foo/Documents/todo-list.md": [
         "## Shame list (I'll never do these)",
       ]
     }
     

     Note:

     • Setext headings (underlined with === or ---) can also be omitted, just put their # and ## versions in the setting, respectively.
     • When omitting heading, make sure headings within a document are unique. Duplicate headings may lead to unpredictable behavior.

• Easily add/update/remove section numbering

  

• In case you are seeing unexpected TOC recognition, you can add a <!-- no toc --> comment above the list.

List editing

Note: By default, this extension tries to determine indentation size for different lists according to CommonMark Spec. If you prefer to use a fixed tab size, please change the list.indentationSize setting.

Print Markdown to HTML

• Commands Markdown: Print current document to HTML and Markdown: Print documents to HTML (batch mode)

• Compatible with other installed Markdown plugins (e.g. Markdown Footnotes). The exported HTML should look the same as inside VS Code (except for a few theme colors due to the limitations of APIs).

• Use comment <!-- title: Your Title --> (in the first line) to specify a title of the exported HTML.

• Plain links to .md files will be converted to .html.

• It's recommended to print the exported HTML to PDF with browser (e.g. Chrome) if you want to share your documents with others.

GitHub Flavored Markdown

• Table formatter

  

  Note: The key binding is Ctrl + Shift + I on Linux. See Visual Studio Code Key Bindings.

• Task lists

Math

Please use Markdown+Math for dedicated math support. Be sure to disable math.enabled option of this extension.

Auto completions

Tip: also support the option completion.root

• Images/Files (respects option search.exclude)

  

• Math functions (including option katex.macros)

  

• Reference links

  

Others

• Paste link on selected text

  

• Add "Close Preview" keybinding, which allows you to close the preview tab using the same keybinding of "Open Preview" (Ctrl + Shift + V or Ctrl + K V).

Available Commands

• Markdown All in One: Create Table of Contents
• Markdown All in One: Update Table of Contents
• Markdown All in One: Add/Update section numbers
• Markdown All in One: Remove section numbers
• Markdown All in One: Toggle code span
• Markdown All in One: Toggle code block
• Markdown All in One: Print current document to HTML
• Markdown All in One: Print documents to HTML
• Markdown All in One: Toggle math environment
• Markdown All in One: Toggle list
  • It will cycle through list markers (by default -, *, +, 1. and 1), which can be changed with option list.toggle.candidate-markers).

Keyboard Shortcuts

Table

Key	Command
Ctrl/Cmd + B	Toggle bold
Ctrl/Cmd + I	Toggle italic
Alt+S (on Windows)	Toggle strikethrough1
Ctrl + Shift + ]	Toggle heading (uplevel)
Ctrl + Shift + [	Toggle heading (downlevel)
Ctrl/Cmd + M	Toggle math environment
Alt + C	Check/Uncheck task list item
Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + V	Toggle preview
Ctrl/Cmd + K V	Toggle preview to side

^{1. If the cursor is on a list/task item without selection, strikethrough will be added to the whole item (line)}

Supported Settings

Table

Name	Default	Description
markdown.extension.completion.respectVscodeSearchExclude	true	Whether to consider search.exclude option when providing file path completions
markdown.extension.completion.root		Root folder when providing file path completions (It takes effect when the path starts with /)
markdown.extension.italic.indicator	*	Use * or _ to wrap italic text
markdown.extension.bold.indicator	**	Use ** or __ to wrap bold text
markdown.extension.katex.macros	{}	KaTeX macros e.g. { "\\name": "expansion", ... }
markdown.extension.list.indentationSize	adaptive	Use different indentation size for ordered and unordered list
markdown.extension.list.toggle.candidate-markers	[ "-", "*", "+", "1.", "1)" ]	Use a array for toggle ordered list marker e.g. ["*", "1."]
markdown.extension.orderedList.autoRenumber	true	Auto fix list markers as you edits
markdown.extension.orderedList.marker	ordered	Or one: always use 1. as ordered list marker
markdown.extension.preview.autoShowPreviewToSide	false	Automatically show preview when opening a Markdown file.
markdown.extension.print.absoluteImgPath	true	Convert image path to absolute path
markdown.extension.print.imgToBase64	false	Convert images to base64 when printing to HTML
markdown.extension.print.includeVscodeStylesheets	true	Whether to include VS Code's default styles
markdown.extension.print.onFileSave	false	Print to HTML on file save
markdown.extension.print.theme	light	Theme of the exported HTML
markdown.extension.print.validateUrls	true	Enable/disable URL validation when printing
markdown.extension.syntax.decorations	true	Add decorations to strikethrough and code span
markdown.extension.syntax.decorationFileSizeLimit	50000	Don't render syntax decorations if a file is larger than this size (in byte/B)
markdown.extension.syntax.plainTheme	false	A distraction-free theme
markdown.extension.tableFormatter.enabled	true	Enable GFM table formatter
markdown.extension.toc.slugifyMode	github	Slugify mode for TOC link generation (vscode, github, gitlab or gitea)
markdown.extension.toc.omittedFromToc	{}	Lists of headings to omit by project file (e.g. { "README.md": ["# Introduction"] })
markdown.extension.toc.levels	1..6	Control the heading levels to show in the table of contents.
markdown.extension.toc.orderedList	false	Use ordered list in the table of contents.
markdown.extension.toc.plaintext	false	Just plain text.
markdown.extension.toc.unorderedList.marker	-	Use -, * or + in the table of contents (for unordered list)
markdown.extension.toc.updateOnSave	true	Automatically update the table of contents on save.

FAQ

Q: Error "command 'markdown.extension.onXXXKey' not found"

• In most cases, it is because VS Code needs a few seconds to load this extension when you open a Markdown file for the first time. (You will see a message "Activating Extensions..." on the status bar.)

• If you still see this "command not found" error after waiting for a long time, please try to restart VS Code. If needed, reinstall this extension:

  1. Uninstall this extension.
  2. Close and restart VS Code. (important!)
  3. Reinstall this extension.

• If it doesn't help, feel free to open a new issue on GitHub. It would be better if you can report any suspicious error information to us: It's usually in VS Code's menubar Help > Toggle Developer Tools > Console.

• (As a last resort, you may choose to delete onXXXKey keys through VS Code's Keyboard Shortcuts editor if you do not need the list editing feature at all.)

Q: Which Markdown syntax is supported?

• CommonMark
• Tables, strikethrough and task lists (from GitHub Flavored Markdown)
• Math support (from KaTeX)
• Front matter

For other Markdown syntax, you need to install the corresponding extensions from VS Code marketplace (e.g. Mermaid diagram, emoji, footnotes and superscript). Once installed, they will take effect in VS Code and also the exported HTML file.

Q: This extension has overridden some of my key bindings (e.g. Ctrl + B, Alt + C)

You can easily manage key bindings with VS Code's Keyboard Shortcuts editor. (Commands provided by this extension have prefix markdown.extension.)

Q: The extension is unresponsive, causing lag etc. (performance issues)

From experience, there is a good chance that the performance issues are caused by other extensions (e.g., some spell checker extensions).

This can be verified if you try again with all other extensions disabled (execute Developer: Reload with Extensions Disabled or Extensions: Disable All Installed Extensions for this Workspace in the VS Code command Palette) and then enable this extension.

To find out the root cause, you can install our development build (debug.vsix) and create a CPU profile following this official instruction from the VS Code. And then please open a GitHub issue with that profile (.cpuprofile.txt) attached.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG for more information.

Latest Development Build

Download it here, please click the latest passing event to download artifacts.

There are two versions: markdown-all-in-one-*.vsix is the regular build, while debug.vsix is used to create a verbose CPU profile.

To install, execute Extensions: Install from VSIX... in the VS Code Command Palette (ctrl + shift + p)

Contributing

• File bugs, feature requests in GitHub Issues.
• Leave a review on Visual Studio Marketplace.
• Buy me a coffee ☕ (via PayPal, Alipay or WeChat).

Special thanks to the collaborator @Lemmingh and all other contributors.

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