Markdown Links to URLs

What the Markdown Links to URLs tool does

Markdown Links to URLs takes a Markdown document and rewrites every inline link so that only its destination address is left. A line such as Read the [release notes](https://example.com/notes) first becomes Read the https://example.com/notes first. The label in square brackets, the brackets themselves, the parentheses and any double-quoted title are dropped, and the raw URL takes their place in the same position on the line.

The conversion is deliberately narrow. It touches inline link syntax and nothing else, so headings, lists, emphasis, tables and plain paragraphs come through exactly as you wrote them. Fenced code blocks are skipped completely, which means a code sample that happens to contain bracket-and-parenthesis text is never rewritten by accident.

Why you would want raw URLs instead of Markdown links

Link labels are great for reading a rendered page, but there are plenty of places where the label gets in the way and the address is what matters:

• Plain-text destinations. SMS messages, plain-text email, commit messages, chat tools that do not render Markdown and terminal output all show [text](url) as literal punctuation. Turning links into bare URLs makes them clickable in most of those clients, because they auto-detect web addresses.
• Auditing where a document points. When you review a long README or a knowledge-base article, a link that says "here" or "this guide" hides its target. Converting every link exposes the actual domains and paths so you can spot outdated hosts, tracking parameters or links to staging servers.
• Feeding text to other tools. Spreadsheets, link checkers, search-and-replace scripts and AI prompts often handle a bare URL more predictably than Markdown syntax.
• Printed or exported copies. On paper a label cannot be clicked, so a reader needs the address itself.

How the conversion works

Everything happens in your browser. The page reads the text from the input editor, processes it with JavaScript, and writes the result to the output editor. No request is sent to a server for the conversion, so the Markdown you paste stays on your device.

The script walks through your document one line at a time. When a line starts with three or more backticks or three or more tildes (leading spaces are allowed), it treats that line as a code fence. Everything until a matching closing fence of the same character is copied over untouched. Outside fences, each line is scanned for inline links and images and each match is replaced by its URL.

Patterns that are converted

Notice that images are converted too. The help note under the tool says so directly: image syntax like ![alt](url) is also turned into the raw URL. If you want to keep the picture's description rather than its address, use Markdown Remove Images Keep Alt on the document first.

Patterns that are left alone

• Reference-style links such as [text][ref] with a separate [ref]: https://... definition. The tool only recognises the inline form with the URL in parentheses.
• Autolinks written as <https://example.com> and bare URLs already in the text.
• HTML anchors like <a href="...">.
• Links with single-quoted or parenthesised titles, for example [a](url 'title'). Only double-quoted titles are recognised, so these lines stay as they were.
• Anything inside a fenced code block.

How to use it, step by step

1. Put your Markdown into the Input Markdown editor. Type it, drop it in with your keyboard, or click Paste at the top of the tool to read it from your clipboard. Your browser may ask for clipboard permission the first time.
2. Click Convert Links. The output appears in the Output Markdown editor on the right.
3. Check the two status cards. Conversion status changes to "Output ready" when there is a result, and Links converted shows how many links and images were replaced. A toast message tells you if no Markdown links were found.
4. Read through the output, especially around any complicated links (see the limitations below).
5. Click Copy Output to put the result on your clipboard, or Download to save it as markdown-links-to-urls.md.
6. Use Copy Input if you need the original back, or Clear to empty both editors and reset the counters.

The footers show the character count of input and output, the number of links detected in the input, and the number of lines in the output. These figures refresh when you paste, convert or clear.

A worked example

Suppose your project README contains this paragraph:

Install the CLI from the [download page](https://example.com/cli "CLI downloads"), then follow the [quick start](https://example.com/start). ![Build badge](https://example.com/badge.svg)

After clicking Convert Links the line reads:

Install the CLI from the https://example.com/cli, then follow the https://example.com/start. https://example.com/badge.svg

The sentence no longer flows as nicely, because "download page" and "quick start" were the readable part. That trade-off is the point of this tool: you keep where things point and lose how they were described. If you only want to remove the URL and keep the wording, this is the wrong tool; you need a link stripper that keeps text instead.

Tips for clean results

• Close your code fences. The tool relies on fence lines to know what to skip. An opening fence with no closing fence means the rest of the document is treated as code and none of its links are converted.
• Match fence characters. A block opened with backticks must be closed with backticks; a tilde line will not close it.
• Convert reference links first if you need them. If your document uses [text][1] style, rewrite those as inline links in your editor before running this tool.
• Review sentences that become awkward. Phrases like "click here" turn into "click https://..." which may need light editing.
• Keep a copy of the original. The conversion cannot be reversed, because the labels are gone from the output.

What not to do

• Do not run it on a document you plan to publish as rendered Markdown unless you really want bare addresses in the page. Most renderers will not turn a bare URL into a link unless the extended autolink feature is on.
• Do not expect it to validate or shorten URLs. The address is copied as written, including tracking parameters and fragments.
• Do not rely on it for inline code. Inline code spans in single backticks on a normal line are not protected the way fenced blocks are, so a link example inside backticks on a regular line is converted.

Known limitations

• URLs containing spaces. The URL part must be a single run of non-space characters. A link written as [text](<my file.pdf>) is not matched and stays as it was; an angle-bracket address without spaces is converted but keeps its angle brackets.
• Linked images. A badge written as [![alt](image.png)](https://target) nests one link inside another. The single-pass pattern does not handle this nesting: [![alt](image.png)](https://target) comes out as image.png](https://target). Fix those lines by hand, or run Markdown Remove Images Keep Alt first so the badge becomes a plain link.
• Line based. A link whose label wraps onto a second line is not matched.
• Size. No limit is set in code, but very large documents depend on your browser's memory and the editor's performance.

Who finds this useful

Technical writers preparing plain-text release emails, developers pasting documentation into tickets or commit messages, SEO and content teams auditing outbound links, students copying references into a bibliography, and anyone moving notes from a Markdown app into a tool that shows Markdown as raw text. Related clean-up jobs in the same family include Markdown Remove HTML for stray tags and Markdown Remove Code Blocks when you want prose only.

Frequently Asked Questions