Save a web page as Markdown.

Markdown is plain text with light formatting, which makes it the most durable way to keep a web page: small, readable in any editor and easy to search, version or hand to an AI tool. Here are three ways to get a page into it.

Guides
By Sharier, founder of DefyRot
Updated October 21, 2026

The quick answer

In Chrome, install a Markdown-saving extension such as DefyRot and press Ctrl+Shift+S: the article is saved as clean Markdown you can copy or export. In Obsidian, use the official Web Clipper. On the command line, run pandoc <address> -f html -t gfm -o page.md.

Why save pages as Markdown

It lasts. A .md file opens in any text editor today and in twenty years.
It is small. No scripts, trackers or layout, just the content.
It works everywhere: Obsidian, Notion, GitHub, static site generators and AI assistants all read it.

With DefyRot (one keypress)

DefyRot saves the page you are reading as Markdown when you press Ctrl+Shift+S. It first pulls out the article itself (leaving out menus, ads and sidebars), then converts it, keeping headings, lists, links and code blocks.

Open any saved page in your vault and choose Copy Markdown to paste it anywhere.
With Pro, export the whole vault as a ZIP of Markdown files.
Your copy also stays readable offline, and opens automatically if the original link dies.

With Obsidian Web Clipper

If you keep notes in Obsidian, its official Web Clipper extension saves a page as a Markdown note straight into your vault, with templates for the note's properties.

From the command line with pandoc

pandoc converts between document formats and can read a web address directly:

pandoc https://example.com/article -f html -t gfm -o article.md

It converts the whole page, menus and footers included, so expect to trim the result. To convert HTML you already saved, use the file name instead of the address.

What does "save as Markdown" mean?

It means keeping the page's content as Markdown text: # for headings, - for list items, [text](link) for links and fenced blocks for code. The words and structure survive; the website's design does not. For reading, searching and reusing the content, that is usually exactly what you want.