How to convert a Markdown file to PDF

Question

I have a Markdown file that I wish to convert to PDF so that I can upload it on Speakerdeck. I am using Pandoc to convert from markdown to PDF.

My problem is I can't specify what content should go on what page of the PDF, because Markdown doesn't provide any feature like that.

E.g., Markdown:

###Hello
* abc
* def

###Bye
* ghi
* jkl

Now I want Hello to be one slide and Bye to be on another slide on Speakerdeck. So, I will need them to be on different pages in the PDF that I generate using Pandoc.

But both Hello and Bye gets on the same page in the PDF.

How can I accomplish this?

try using gimli ruby gem. its quite easy, for reference see blog.kushdilip.com/2014/02/… — kushdilip
– kushdilip, Commented Feb 19, 2014 at 19:37
For future readers, they may want to check out github.com/alanshaw/markdown-pdf — iled
– iled, Commented Apr 16, 2016 at 12:51

Community · Accepted Answer · 2023-07-14 23:45:51Z

288

Via the terminal (tested in 2020)

Download dependencies

sudo apt-get install pandoc texlive-latex-base texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-extra-utils texlive-latex-extra

Try to use

pandoc MANUAL.txt -o example13.pdf
pandoc MANUAL.md -o example13.pdf

Via a Visual Studio Code extension (tested in 2020)

Download the Yzane Markdown PDF extension
Right click inside a Markdown file (md)
The content below will appear
Select the Markdown PDF: Export (pdf) option

edited Jul 14, 2023 at 23:45

CommunityBot

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answered Apr 2, 2019 at 22:00

yEmreAk.com

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9 Comments

lanoxx Over a year ago

In a debian:10 docker image, this tries to install 1GB of dependencies, all that just to convert a few kilobytes of Markdown into PDF. I wonder if there is a solution that involves a bit less overhead.

Matt Over a year ago

Note: For me the second solution only worked after restarting VSCode

deeenes Over a year ago

The Linux OS doesn't support emojis well (Windows is better) -- I doubt it's the duty of operating systems to support emojis. I guess it's about applications.

NearHuscarl Over a year ago

The answer rocks! it works well with images and code snippets unlike the other alternatives.

carloswm85 Dec 5, 2024 at 19:16

Yzane Markdown PDF extension still working on December 2024.

|

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-29 20:55:24Z

82

2016 update:

NPM module: https://github.com/alanshaw/markdown-pdf

Has a command line interface: https://github.com/alanshaw/markdown-pdf#usage

npm install -g markdown-pdf
markdown-pdf <markdown-file-path>

Or, an online service: http://markdown2pdf.com

edited Jan 29, 2021 at 20:55

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jun 22, 2016 at 20:07

oori

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8 Comments

Shadi Over a year ago

using the online service, I keep getting Error generating PDF.

juminet Over a year ago

The online service seems broken now.

oori Over a year ago

@ÁrpádMagosányi well, I use it on Ubuntu. be specific what doesn't work.

rickfoosusa Over a year ago

Works on Ubuntu 19.04 command line. A few event related warnings, but produces a correct pdf.

Elouan Keryell-Even Over a year ago

I tested it, tables don't seem to have separating lines in the output PDF

|

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-29 20:54:11Z

45

As SpeakerDeck only accepts PDF files, the easiest option is to use the Latex Beamer backend for pandoc:

pandoc -t beamer -o output.pdf yourInput.mkd

Note that you should have LaTeX Beamer installed for that.

In Ubuntu, you can do sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-recommended to install it. If you use Windows, you may try this answer.

You may also want to try the HTML/CSS output from Slidy:

pandoc --self-contained -t slidy -o output-slidy.html yourInput.mkd

It has a decent printing output, as you can check out trying to print the original.

Read more about slideshows with pandoc here.

edited Jan 29, 2021 at 20:54

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 13, 2013 at 14:31

Elias Dorneles

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5 Comments

alhelal Over a year ago

pandoc -t beamer -o output.pdf yourInput.mkd produces only one pdf page. Extra contents are cut.

rph Over a year ago

@alhelal Same issue here. Any hints?

Elias Dorneles Over a year ago

@rkioji Try the tip from the other answer, add *** where you want to break a page.

Bryce Guinta Over a year ago

To install the dependencies on Fedora: sudo dnf install -y pandoc texlive-beamer texlive-ec

Dimitri Lesnoff Over a year ago

Last link johnmacfarlane.net is dead. The domain probably does not exist anymore.

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-29 21:17:13Z

25

Easy online solution: dillinger.io.

Just paste your Markdown content into the editor on the left and see the (html) preview on the right. Then click Export as on the top and chose pdf.

It's based on the open source dillinger editor.

edited Jan 29, 2021 at 21:17

Peter Mortensen

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answered Sep 17, 2020 at 10:35

mori

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3 Comments

Tomáš M. Over a year ago

pandoc errored out on me, because of "too nested" lists (was trying to print an outliner export), dillinger worked, thanks!

karttu Over a year ago

dillinger.io renders HTML tags as text in tables, eg. b<sub>7</sub> | b<sub>6</sub> | etc... does not display subscript in the HTML preview, but funnily enough the PDF output is correct, so thanks from me also!

RSW Jan 22 at 4:30

I tried couple of Online Markdown to PDF converters, dillinger.io was best. It preservs the links and table.

Nan0fire · Accepted Answer · 2022-12-22 07:33:24Z

14

I found that many markdown-to-pdf converters produce files that I don't find exactly neat-looking. However there is a solution to this.

If you're using IntelliJ, you can use a plugin called "Markdown". The export function uses pandoc as an engine so you probably will need to install that along with pdf-latex. https://pandoc.org/installing.html

In IntelliJ, under Tools > Markdown Converter > Export Markdown File To...

And there you go, a clean looking document. Additional styling can be added via a .css stylesheet.

answered Dec 22, 2022 at 7:33

Nan0fire

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Comments

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-29 20:59:26Z

8

Adding to elias' answer, if you want to separate text in slides, just put *** between the text you want to separate. For your example to be in several pages, write it like this:

### Hello
- abc
- def

***

### Bye
- ghi
- jkl

And then use elias' answer, pandoc -t beamer -o output.pdf yourInput.md.

I have Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) and installed the full package from texlive. It works for me.

edited Jan 29, 2021 at 20:59

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jan 12, 2019 at 12:50

tpdsantos

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Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-29 21:13:34Z

8

Previously I had used the npm markdown-pdf answer. However, on a fresh install of Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) I had issues getting it to install correctly.

Instead I started using the Visual Studio Code package: "Markdown PDF"

Details:
Name: Markdown PDF
Id: yzane.markdown-pdf
Description: Convert Markdown to PDF
Version: 1.2.0
Publisher: yzane
Visual Studio Marketplace link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=yzane.markdown-pdf

It has worked consistently well. If you've had issues getting other answers to work, I would recommend trying this.

edited Jan 29, 2021 at 21:13

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jun 2, 2019 at 6:52

John Forbes

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1 Comment

Rasjid Wilcox Over a year ago

I've just done this on both Windows and Linux. Installation was a breeze in both cases, and worked well without any configuration or setup.

3FoxTrot0 · Accepted Answer · 2025-09-01 04:45:57Z

7

With python script:

pip install markdown-pdf

from markdown_pdf import Section, MarkdownPdf
    
pdf = MarkdownPdf()
# each section starts from new page in pdf file
pdf.add_section(Section("###Hello\n* abc\n* def\n"))  # page 1
pdf.add_section(Section("###Bye\n* ghi\n* jkl\n"))  # page 2
pdf.save("out.pdf")

edited Sep 1 at 4:45

3FoxTrot0

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answered Oct 2, 2023 at 16:43

vb64

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2 Comments

Oo'- Over a year ago

Too bad that I can define the page margin size. It does not support hr element.

sglbl Jan 14 at 10:14

unfortunately it doesn't even make the font bigger for ###

Ulterno · Accepted Answer · 2024-01-17 21:20:36Z

5

Using Okular

Make sure your file has the ".md" extension.
Open in Okular
File -> Export As -> PDF -> Select save location and save.

Using discount

To go the Markdown -> HTML -> PDF path, you can use the discount package directly (Okular uses it)

Say your file is named "filename.md". Use markdown filename.md > outfile.html to get the html into an html file "outfile.html".
Use your preferred method of converting HTML to PDF.

discount also has other binaries: theme and makepage - which you can check out for their specific features.

edited Jan 17, 2024 at 21:20

answered Jan 17, 2024 at 21:05

Ulterno

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1 Comment

xCovelus Oct 2 at 15:16

Simple and working

Ramesh · Accepted Answer · 2024-07-24 16:40:50Z

5

Using pandoc's docker image is one option.

docker run --rm \
       --volume "$(pwd):/data" \
       --user $(id -u):$(id -g) \
       pandoc/latex README.md -o outfile.epub

https://hub.docker.com/r/pandoc/latex

answered Jul 24, 2024 at 16:40

Ramesh

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Comments

Romaingin · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-02 22:55:52Z

3

I've managed to get a stable Markdown -> HTML > PDF pipeline working with the MarkReport project.

It is a bit more than what Pandoc will do though, since it is based on WeasyPrint and is therefore aimed for clean report publishing, with cover, headers, sections, ... It also enriches the HTML with syntax highlighting and LaTeX equations.

answered Mar 2, 2019 at 22:55

Romaingin

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1 Comment

tarleb Over a year ago

Minor note: pandoc can export via WeasyPrint, too. (Useful, e.g., when targeting HTML from a document containing citations).

Jesse Zender Portnoy · Accepted Answer · 2025-02-21 15:13:22Z

I suggest using mdtopdf. It supports syntax highlighting, pagination and dark, light and custom themes.

Install md2pdf by obtaining the release for your arch and OS (deb and RPM packages are also available) or, if you have go installed, invoke:

$ go install github.com/mandolyte/mdtopdf/v2/cmd/md2pdf@latest

md2pdf is also available via Homebrew:

$ brew install md2pdf

If you require syntax highlighting, download the gohighlight lexers

md2pdf supports all major markdown features and accepts local files, remote HTTP(s) URL and STDIN inputs. The below command will convert a markdown file to a PDF with a dark theme, syntax highlighting (you'll need to provide the language hint, of course), page/slide separation and a footer:

md2pdf -i https://github.com/jessp01/crash-course-in/raw/main/courses/apt_dpkg_deb/apt_dpkg_deb.md \
    -o apt_dpkg_deb.pdf \
    -s ~/.config/zaje/syntax_files \
    --theme dark \
    --new-page-on-hr \
    --with-footer \
    --author "Jesse Portnoy <[email protected]>" \
    --title "A crash course on handling deb packages"

SandsByte · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-05 03:10:19Z

2

Simple way with iOS:

Use Shortcuts app (by Apple)

Make Rich Text From Markdown: Clipboard

^

Make PDF from Rich Text From Markdown

^

Show [PDF] in Quick Look

Just copy text and run the shortcut. Press share in Quick Look (bottom left) to store or send it. I use this to quickly convert Joplin notes to pdf.

answered Feb 5, 2022 at 3:10

SandsByte

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Comments

jdhildeb · Accepted Answer · 2024-03-13 01:58:04Z

2

Use the python md2pdf library with weasyprint.

pip install md2pdf weasyprint

Then convert your file

md2pdf inputfile.md outputfile.pdf

Want more control over formatting? Grab some markdown css from here: https://github.com/sindresorhus/github-markdown-css

Then use:

md2pdf --css markdown.css inputfile.md outputfile.pdf

answered Mar 13, 2024 at 1:58

jdhildeb

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2 Comments

Oo'- Over a year ago

md2pdf and weasyprint are very slow when generating to PDF, using a small and simple CSS file.

jdhildeb Dec 2, 2024 at 16:09

@Oo'-: I haven't experienced slowness. How large is your markdown input file?

phlaxyr · Accepted Answer · 2024-09-10 03:28:32Z

1

This is somewhat a hack, but I found that this method was the easiest for rendering math equations (easier than pandoc-based solutions)

Install Markdown Preview Enhanced
Open Preview
"Open in Browser"
Print

answered Sep 10, 2024 at 3:28

phlaxyr

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3 Comments

Jonas WebDev Jan 6 at 23:47

The "Open in Browser" step opens my md file inside to VSCode; please let me know how to open it externally on a browser to print.

phlaxyr Jan 8 at 1:18

Hmm, what happens if you do this? Right Click > Export > HTML > HTML (offline)

Jonas WebDev Jan 8 at 17:59

I don't have this "Export" option, but no worries, I solved it using the "Markdown PDF" extension, thank you

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How to convert a Markdown file to PDF

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Via the terminal (tested in 2020)

Download dependencies

Try to use

Via a Visual Studio Code extension (tested in 2020)

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Using Okular

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Via the terminal (tested in 2020)

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Via a Visual Studio Code extension (tested in 2020)

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Using Okular

Using discount

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