Convert the Markdown to rich text before you paste. Copy the Markdown, click the
Clip Text Transform icon in the menu bar, pick Convert to Rich Text, and
paste into your email. Headings, bullet lists, bold and links arrive as formatting instead of # and
**. The conversion happens on your Mac.
Markdown is plain text with a few conventions: # marks a heading, ** marks bold,
- starts a bullet. An email body expects formatted text, so when you paste Markdown as it is, the
symbols travel with it. It happens with notes you wrote yourself, with a README, and especially with answers copied
from an AI chat.
You could paste the text into a converter website and copy the result back. For a work email, though, that means handing a draft — often someone else's words — to a page you know nothing about, and doing it again for every message. The fix below stays on your Mac and takes three steps.
Do it from the menu bar with Clip Text Transform
There's no window to open and no website to paste into. The conversion works on whatever is on your clipboard.
1. Copy the Markdown
Select it wherever you wrote it — a notes app, a text editor, a chat window — and press ⌘C.
2. Pick Convert to Rich Text
Click the Clip Text Transform icon in the menu bar and choose Convert to Rich Text. The formatted version replaces the Markdown on your clipboard.
3. Paste into the email
Click into the message and press ⌘V.
# Meeting notes
- **Action:** ship v3
- See [roadmap](https://example.com)
Some *emphasis* and `code`.- Action: ship v3
- See roadmap
Some emphasis and code.
code in a monospaced font.For the full set of formats — Markdown, Rich Text, HTML and Plain Text, in any direction — see the Markdown to rich text converter in your menu bar.
When the text comes from an AI chat
Answers copied from an AI chat often arrive in Markdown: numbered steps with a bold lead-in, ###
headings, bullet lists, code blocks. Pasted straight into an email, that becomes a page of asterisks and hashes. You
have two ways out, and which one fits depends on the email.
Keep the structure — Convert to Rich Text. The steps, headings and bold stay, as formatting:
1. **Define the goal.** Decide what success looks like.
2. **Pick a metric.** …
3. **Review weekly.** …
### Summary and ### Next steps, each followed by a short - list, come through
as two headings with a bulleted list under each. A fenced code block keeps its lines in a monospaced font; the
``` fence and the language name after it disappear.
Just the words — Convert to Plain Text. When the email should be plain, or you'd rather format it yourself, this takes the markup away:
The **main point** is simple. See the [docs](https://example.com/docs) for details.
The main point is simple. See the docs for details.
Notice what went: the link's address. Plain text keeps the words of a link, not where it pointed — if the reader needs the URL, use Rich Text or paste the address separately.
Which one to pick. If the email will be read as a formatted message and the structure helps — steps, sections, a code snippet — use Rich Text. If you're pasting into a plain reply, quoting a sentence or two, or you'll restyle it yourself, use Plain Text. You can always copy the Markdown again and try the other.
What to watch out for
A list with nothing else in it stays as it is. If the whole text is a numbered list with no bold,
no link and no heading — 1. Define the goal / 2. Pick a metric — Convert to Rich Text
leaves it unchanged, numbers and all. The same list gets built once the text around it carries some other
Markdown.
Some Markdown doesn't carry over. Images drop out entirely. A horizontal rule (---)
never becomes a line, task checkboxes (- [ ]) become ordinary bullets, and _underscore_
emphasis stays as typed. Tables and strikethrough are built only inside a document with other Markdown in it — on
their own, they stay as text.
Plain Text isn't symbol-free for lists. Convert to Plain Text turns list items into lines that start with a tab and a bullet (•) or a number without its dot, and it closes up the empty lines between paragraphs. In an email that shows as indented lines rather than a clean paragraph.
If nothing changed, nothing was built. When Convert to Rich Text finds no Markdown it can build from, the text on your clipboard stays exactly as you copied it. Check it against the list above — usually it's a plain numbered list or a construct that doesn't carry over on its own.
How it looks in the message is up to your email app. What goes onto your clipboard is ordinary formatted text, and it pastes the way any formatted text does where you write. Fonts and spacing in the finished email come from the app you send it with.
The conversion runs on your Mac, and the text you convert stays on your Mac — details in the Privacy Policy.
Markdown in an email is one of many small fixes like this — find more everyday text tasks on your Mac.