Markdown in Five Minutes

Markdown is a way to format text with plain characters: a # for a heading, asterisks for emphasis. Your file stays readable as plain text, and Graphite turns it into clean formatting in Preview and every export.

In the editor, Markdown symbols sit quietly in the margin and fade back, so your text keeps one clean left edge.

Headings

# Title
## Section
### Subsection

Emphasis

Press a shortcut again to remove the formatting.

Lists

- Milk
- Bread
  - Rye, if they have it

1. Draft
2. Rest
3. Revise

- [ ] Outline chapter two
- [x] Interview notes

The last example is a task list. In Preview and exports it becomes checkboxes. Tab indents a list item.

Links and images

[AROICE](https://aroice.in)
![A quiet desk](https://example.com/desk.jpg)

Web addresses become links on their own. Images are linked from the web rather than stored in Graphite. To protect your privacy, Preview doesn’t load images from other websites until you ask it to.

Quotes, code and dividers

> A quote, set off from the text.

```js
console.log('Code keeps its spacing')
```

---

In the editor, code blocks are colored for most programming languages when you name one after the backticks.

Tables

| Draft | Words |
| ----- | ----: |
| One   |   812 |
| Two   |   640 |

Tags

Write a #tag anywhere in the text, such as #essay or #ideas/2026. Tags appear in the library so you can filter by them, and they go into blog post front matter.

Typography

In Preview and exports, straight quotes become “curly” ones and double hyphens become dashes. Your file keeps the plain characters.

Paste from the web

Copy part of a web page, a Google Doc or a Word file and paste it with ⌘V: Graphite turns it into Markdown. Headings, links, lists, bold and italic, quotes, code and simple tables come across, and images become Markdown image links. Scripts, styles, forms and tracking pixels are dropped, and the conversion happens on your device. Dragging a selection from a browser into the editor works the same way.

Want the words without the formatting? Choose Paste as Plain Text ⌥⇧⌘V from the More menu or the Command Palette. It’s free.