Opening a Markdown file from a link or from your computer
You do not have to copy and paste the text yourself. There are two other ways to get a document into the editor.
Upload a file
Upload .md opens a file picker. It accepts .md, .markdown, .mdx and .txt. The
file is read by your browser and placed in the input pane. It is never sent to a server.
Load from a link
From URL opens a small bar where you paste an address and press Load.
The address you copy from your browser is usually the page that displays a file, not the file itself. That page is HTML, and a browser will not let one website read another’s pages anyway. So the address is converted to the raw file first:
| You paste | It loads |
|---|---|
| A GitHub file page | The raw file on raw.githubusercontent.com |
| A GitHub Gist | The gist’s raw endpoint |
| A GitLab file page | The same path with raw in place of blob |
| A Bitbucket file page | The same path under raw |
| Any other address | Exactly as given, minus any # anchor |
You can leave off https://. A bare github.com/... is accepted.
When a link will not load
- The host does not allow it. A website has to opt in before another site can read its files from the browser. The big code-hosting sites do; many personal sites do not. If a link fails, open it, copy the text, and paste.
- The file is too large. Anything over 5 MB is refused. A document you would reasonably want to edit is nowhere near that.
- The address is private. Only publicly readable files can be fetched.
- It is not text. A link to a PDF or an image is not a Markdown document.
Loading replaces what is in the pane
Loading puts the new document in the input pane. If you had been typing, use Undo straight afterwards to get your text back.