Markdown Strip Links

Markdown Strip Links in one paragraph

Markdown Strip Links rewrites inline links of the form [label](url) in a Markdown document. You pick what survives: the readable label, the raw web address, or nothing at all. Headings, lists, emphasis and fenced code blocks pass through untouched, and the cleaned Markdown appears in an output editor you can copy or download as markdown-without-links.md.

Three modes, three different results

The three buttons at the top of the tool decide what each link becomes. Here is the same input sentence run through each mode:

Input: Read the [setup guide](https://example.com/setup "Setup") before you start.

Notice two things. The optional link title in double quotes is dropped in every mode. And Keep URLs and Remove all can leave sentences that read oddly, because the label is not kept, so plan a quick read-through after using them.

Who this is for

• Writers repurposing blog posts into newsletters, print or e-book formats where inline links do not work.
• Developers preparing README text for package registries or terminals that show raw Markdown.
• People building prompts or datasets who want link labels as natural language rather than bracket and parenthesis noise.
• Editors auditing outbound links who want to see every target as a bare address with Keep URLs before deciding what to restore.
• Anyone sharing internal docs externally where intranet links should not be visible at all.

How the stripping works behind the button

When you click Strip, the page sends your Markdown and the chosen mode to the site's server as a JSON request. A PHP service normalises the line endings, splits the document into parts inside and outside fenced code blocks, and applies one pattern to the parts outside code fences. The cleaned text comes back and is placed in Output Markdown. The tool's code returns the result straight to your page and does not save your text, but the text does travel to the server, so do not paste anything you are not allowed to send over the network.

The server accepts up to 200,000 characters per request. Longer input is rejected with a validation message instead of being processed.

Code fences that open with three or more backticks or three or more tildes are respected. A link written inside such a block, for example an example snippet in documentation, keeps its original syntax. Inline code wrapped in single backticks is not protected, so a link written inside `...` is still rewritten.

Using the tool

1. Paste your document into Input Markdown, or click Paste to read it from the clipboard.
2. Look at the counter under the editor. It shows how many [...](...) patterns the page can see, which is a fair estimate of how many replacements will happen.
3. Choose Keep text, Keep URLs or Remove all. The hint under the input changes to describe the selected mode.
4. Click Strip. The button shows a spinner while the server works, and a short message confirms when links have been stripped.
5. Review Output Markdown. The footer shows the character count and word count of the result.
6. Use the copy icon to put the result on your clipboard, or the download icon to save markdown-without-links.md.

The clear icon next to the input empties both editors and switches the mode back to Keep text, so you start fresh for the next document.

What the tool does not touch

Only inline links are rewritten. These forms are left exactly as they were:

• Reference-style links such as [label][1] and their definitions like [1]: https://example.com.
• Autolinks in angle brackets, for example <https://example.com>.
• Bare URLs typed as plain text.
• HTML anchors written as <a href="...">.
• Anything inside fenced code blocks.

If your document relies on reference-style links, convert them to inline links first or remove the definitions by hand.

Watch out for images

Markdown images look like links with an exclamation mark in front: ![alt text](picture.png). The pattern used here matches the bracket-and-parenthesis part of an image too, and the exclamation mark is left behind. In practice that means:

• Keep text turns ![logo](a.png) into !logo.
• Keep URLs turns it into !a.png.
• Remove all leaves a lone !.

If your document has images you want to keep, take them out before stripping and put them back afterwards, or search the output for stray exclamation marks and fix them.

Tips for clean results

• Preview the count first. If the possible-links number is much higher than the number of real links, images are probably being counted.
• Prefer Keep text for reading copy. It is the only mode that keeps sentences grammatically intact.
• Tidy spacing after Remove all. Removing a link leaves the spaces that surrounded it, which can produce double spaces or a gap before punctuation.
• Check URLs that contain parentheses. A link target such as a Wikipedia address ending in _(disambiguation) is cut at the first closing parenthesis. In Keep text mode a stray ) can remain after the label.
• Keep the source. Stripping is one way. Once a URL is gone from the output, the tool cannot bring it back.

Limitations

• Only inline [label](url) links are processed; reference links, autolinks, bare URLs and HTML anchors stay.
• Link labels that contain square brackets, such as [see [1]](url), are not matched.
• Link titles must use double quotes to be recognised; titles in single quotes or parentheses can stop the match.
• Images are matched as links and leave a leading exclamation mark.
• Inline code spans are not protected; only fenced blocks are.
• The input limit is 200,000 characters per run, and the request needs a working connection to the site.

Related tools

To turn the whole document into plain text, including removing headings and emphasis, use the Markdown to Text Converter. To publish the Markdown on the web with links intact, the Markdown to HTML Converter is the better choice.

Frequently Asked Questions