If you use Notion, you’ve probably tried pasting markdown into it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes your code blocks disappear, your checkboxes turn into dashes, and your carefully nested lists become a flat mess.
We got tired of this, so we built a one-shortcut solution into mdMD.
How it works
Press Cmd+Shift+C in mdMD, and your entire document is converted to Notion-compatible HTML and copied to your clipboard. Open Notion, paste, and everything appears exactly as it should:
- Headings preserve their hierarchy
- Code blocks keep their formatting
- Task list checkboxes work as interactive toggles
- Nested lists maintain their structure
- Links stay clickable
The technical side
Under the hood, we built a custom NotionHTMLExporter that uses the same MarkupVisitor pattern as our syntax highlighter. It walks the markdown AST and generates HTML that Notion’s paste handler understands.
This is different from generic markdown-to-HTML conversion. Notion has specific expectations about how content should be structured, and our exporter accounts for all of them.
Saving your work
Of course, the Notion export is just one part of the workflow. Any edits you make in mdMD can be saved directly back to the original .md file with Cmd+S. Your markdown files are always the source of truth. mdMD just makes them easier to work with and share.
Works beyond Notion too
While we built this feature with Notion in mind, the HTML it generates is clean and standards-compliant. That means it also pastes beautifully into Obsidian, Google Docs, Confluence, Slack, and most other rich-text editors. If you share markdown content with people who use different tools, Cmd+Shift+C has you covered regardless of the destination.
Try it yourself
Download mdMD, open any markdown file, and press Cmd+Shift+C. Then paste into Notion and see the difference.