MarkEdit Paste Markdown

A MarkEdit extension that converts rich text on the clipboard into Markdown when you paste, similar to Obsidian.

MarkEdit normally pastes only the text/plain flavor, so lists, inline code, links and headings copied from browsers, chat apps (Cursor, VS Code Copilot Chat, ...) or docs are lost. This extension reads the text/html flavor instead and converts it with Turndown + GFM (tables, strikethrough, task lists).

Behavior

• Converts only HTML with real structure (lists, paragraphs, headings, code, links, emphasis, tables, ...).
• Falls back to normal plain-text paste when:
  • the clipboard has no HTML, or the HTML is only styled <span>/<div> (e.g. code copied from an editor);
  • the cursor is inside a code block or inline code;
  • the clipboard contains files/images;
  • the converted Markdown is identical to the plain text.
• Escaping is intentionally light: identifiers like MY_CONST are kept as-is instead of MY\_CONST.
• Paste is a single undo step.

Install

1. Download markedit-paste-markdown.js from the latest release.
2. Move it into ~/Library/Containers/app.cyan.markedit/Data/Documents/scripts/.
3. Restart MarkEdit.

To uninstall, delete the file and restart MarkEdit.

Build from source

npm install
npm run build      # typecheck, build, and copy to MarkEdit's scripts folder
npm run reload     # restart MarkEdit to load the extension

npm run build:dist builds into dist/ without installing. npm run uninstall removes the installed script.

Development

npm test
npm run typecheck

Releasing

Bump version in package.json, push, then publish a GitHub release tagged v<version> (e.g. v0.1.0). The Release workflow runs the tests, builds the script, and attaches markedit-paste-markdown.js to the release.