Markdown Email: Write Emails in Markdown (Gmail, Outlook)

A markdown email is written in Markdown, rendered to formatted text, and then sent through a normal mail client. No mainstream client reads Markdown natively, so the trick is the render step. Paste the rendered preview into Gmail or Outlook, or let the Markdown Here extension convert it in the compose window. This guide covers both routes and the mailto: syntax.

Can You Use Markdown in an Email?

Yes, but not by typing asterisks into Gmail and hoping. Email bodies travel as text/plain or text/html, and every major client formats the HTML part. Markdown has to become HTML somewhere before it's sent. There is a registered text/markdown media type, defined in RFC 7763 in 2016, but in our reading no mainstream mail client renders it as formatting. A message sent that way arrives as plain text with the symbols showing.

So email markdown, or markdown mail if you prefer that phrasing, means one of two workflows. Either you write in a Markdown editor, render, and paste the result into the compose box. Or you install a browser extension that renders the Markdown inside the compose box for you. Both take under a minute once set up, and both are far faster than clicking toolbar buttons for a long, structured message.

Does Gmail Support Markdown?

No. Gmail, Outlook (desktop, web and the new Outlook), Office 365 and Apple Mail all lack native Markdown rendering as of their current releases. What they do support is pasting rich text from another application, and that's the door Markdown walks through.

Client	Native Markdown	Paste rendered HTML	Markdown Here
Gmail (web)	No	Yes	Yes (Chrome, Firefox, Opera)
Outlook.com and Outlook on the web	No	Yes	Yes (Chrome, Firefox)
Outlook desktop	No	Yes	No
Apple Mail	No	Yes	No
Thunderbird	No	Yes	Yes (add-on)

The one exception people cite is Gmail's plain-text mode, which strips formatting entirely. That's the opposite of what you want. Leave Gmail in its default rich formatting mode so the pasted HTML sticks.

How to Write a Markdown Email and Paste It Into Gmail or Outlook

This is the zero-install markdown to email route. It works in every client in the table above.

1. Write the message in the editor below or in the full-screen editor. Use headings sparingly, keep lists short, and put any code in a fenced block.
2. Check the preview pane. What you see there is what you'll paste.
3. Select everything in the preview pane and copy it. You're copying rendered HTML, not the Markdown source.
4. Click into the compose box in Gmail, Outlook or Apple Mail and paste. Bold, italic, links and lists carry across.
5. Send a test to yourself before sending to a client. Headings, tables and code blocks survive in some clients and get flattened in others, and a 20-second test tells you which.

On a phone the workflow still works, with one change. Open the editor in the mobile browser, long-press the preview, choose Select all, copy, then paste into the Gmail or Outlook app. iOS and Android both carry rich text across apps, though a test message to yourself is still worth the ten seconds.

If the paste comes through as raw HTML tags, you copied from the source side instead of the preview. If it comes through with the symbols still visible, you copied the Markdown text itself. The Markdown to HTML converter gives you the HTML file directly when you'd rather attach it or load it into a template tool. Our conversion guide covers the command-line options for bulk work.

A reusable markdown email template saves the most time. Keep a .md file with your standard status update, onboarding note or meeting recap, fill in the blanks, render, paste. Because the source is plain text, it lives happily in Git or a notes app, and nobody has to fight a signature block in Word.

Markdown Here: Render Markdown Inside the Compose Window

Markdown Here is a browser extension that converts the Markdown in a compose box into formatted email with one click. Write the message, press the toolbar button or the hotkey, and the text turns into rendered HTML in place. Press it again to revert to Markdown for edits.

Its status matters because several older guides call it abandoned. The GitHub repository moved to Chrome's Manifest V3 in version 2.14.0 (October 2024), turned the optional LaTeX rendering off by default in 2.15.0, and shipped 2.16.0 in July 2025 with permissions reduced so the extension only touches a page when you invoke it. The 2.16.0 change also moved the default hotkey to Shift+Alt+M.

It supports Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Thunderbird. The project's compatibility page lists Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo, Fastmail and ProtonMail as working well, with the note that Outlook.com lacks the forgot-to-render check.

Two limits to know. It can't help in desktop Outlook or Apple Mail, where the paste workflow above is the only option. And because the rendering happens in the extension, colleagues who reply to your message see the HTML you sent, not the Markdown, so quoting threads stays clean.

Which Markdown Elements Survive in Each Email Client?

Pasted HTML is at the mercy of the receiving client's sanitiser, not just the sending one. Results vary by client version, so treat this as a starting point and confirm with a test message. In our experience these groupings hold for Gmail and Outlook.

Reliable: bold, italic, links, bulleted and numbered lists, blockquotes, simple two-column tables.

Unreliable: headings, which often arrive as large text in the sender's font. Fenced code blocks, where monospace usually survives but the background colour doesn't. Nested lists deeper than two levels. Images by URL, blocked until the recipient loads remote images. Strikethrough.

Lost: task list checkboxes, footnotes, horizontal rules in some clients, syntax highlighting.

For email we prefer to write with the reliable set only. A short message with bold lead-ins and a numbered list reads well on every phone. The limitation to accept is line breaks. Markdown folds single newlines into paragraphs, so a four-line signature block becomes one run-on line unless you end each line with two spaces or a backslash. Our line break guide shows the options.

Email Addresses and mailto: Links in Markdown

Markdown has two ways to link an email address. Wrap the address in angle brackets and the CommonMark spec turns it into a mailto: link with the address as the visible text. Or write a normal link with a mailto: URL when you want different anchor text.

Contact <support@example.com> for help.

[Email the team](mailto:support@example.com)

Both render as clickable addresses. On GitHub the extended autolinks in GFM also recognise a bare support@example.com with no brackets, but CommonMark doesn't, so use the brackets anywhere else.

A mailto: URL can also pre-fill the message. RFC 6068 defines subject, body, cc and bcc parameters, with spaces encoded as %20 and line breaks in the body as %0D%0A.

[Request a quote](mailto:sales@example.com?subject=Quote%20request&body=Hi%2C%0D%0AI%27d%20like%20a%20quote%20for)

Keep the body short. Long pre-filled bodies break in some clients, and the body parameter is meant only for the plain-text part of the message, so Markdown inside it won't render. The full link syntax, including reference links and titles, is in the Markdown links guide.

Common Markdown Email Mistakes

Pasting the source instead of the preview. The recipient sees **bold** with the asterisks. Copy from the rendered side of the editor, or use the converter's HTML output.

Sending a Markdown Here message before rendering. The extension only converts when you trigger it. Its optional forgot-to-render check for Gmail catches this, but you have to enable it after the 2.16.0 permission change.

Relying on headings for structure. An H1 in an email renders as oversized text in the sender's font and looks like a shout. Use bold lead-ins on paragraphs instead, and keep the syntax to the cheat sheet basics.

Markdown Email FAQ

Writing a markdown email comes down to one habit: render first, then send. Draft in the editor, copy the preview into Gmail, Outlook or Apple Mail, and keep to bold, lists and links for messages that have to look right on every screen. Add Markdown Here if you live in webmail and want the render step to happen in the compose box itself.