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MDLeaf

Your first document

Create a document

Section titled “Create a document”

In the Library choose + New document, give it a title and pick a profile (the page size and theme). You land in the editor.

The editor screen has the Markdown source on the left and the preview on the right. Your work is saved automatically half a second after you stop typing; the top bar shows Saved, Saving… or Unsaved changes.

Draft and page view

Section titled “Draft and page view”

The preview has two modes. Toggle them with the Draft | Page buttons or macOS: ⇧⌘D, Windows and Linux: Ctrl+Shift+D.

  • Draft view shows one continuous column with the width of your page’s text area, so lines wrap exactly as on the page. Page breaks and other directives appear as small markers.
  • Page view lays the document out on real pages, with running headers and footers, page numbers and the table of contents filled in. It updates shortly after you stop typing.

The preview follows the editor as you scroll. Turn this off with the scroll-follow button in the preview’s toolbar.

Layouts

Section titled “Layouts”

Use Editor | Split | Preview (macOS: ⌘\, Windows and Linux: Ctrl+\ cycles them) to focus on writing or reading.

Export a PDF

Section titled “Export a PDF”

Choose Export PDF (macOS: ⌘P, Windows and Linux: Ctrl+P). MDLeaf prepares the pages and opens the browser’s print dialog.

  1. Set the destination to Save as PDF.
  2. Set Margins to None or Default — the pages already contain their margins.
  3. Turn off the browser’s Headers and footers option.

The PDF contains real, selectable text. Links stay clickable; links inside the document, like table-of-contents entries, are clickable in Chromium-based browsers and best-effort in Firefox and Safari.

If the document has problems that may affect the PDF — missing images or blocks taller than a page — MDLeaf tells you before printing.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”