md2pdf

A simple CLI tool for converting markdown to PDF.
It uses md4w to convert markdown to HTML and playwright-core (headless Chrome) to further convert the HTML to PDF. It also uses shiki for code highlighting.

Installation

To run it, you need to have Google Chrome installed separately from the CLI.

deno install -grA jsr:@ryu/md2pdf/cli

Note: If you want to update the CLI, please reinstall with -f flag.

Usage

md2pdf: A simple CLI tool for converting markdown to PDF.

Usage: md2pdf [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Options:
  -w, --watch    Watch for file changes.
  -h, --help     Print help.
  -v, --version  Print version.
  --stylesheet   Set CSS file path used for rendering.

The pdf is generated into the same directory as the markdown file and uses the same filename (with .pdf extension):

md2pdf file.md

Convert multiple markdown files:

md2pdf file1.md file2.md file3.md

Watch mode

Watch for file changes and automatically regenerate PDF when the markdown file is modified:

md2pdf --watch file.md

This is useful for continuous development where you want to see PDF updates in real-time as you edit your markdown.

stdin / stdout Support

md2pdf supports reading from stdin and writing to stdout.
You can pipe markdown content directly to md2pdf, making it easy to integrate with other CLI tools:

# Convert piped input to PDF
cat file.md | md2pdf > path/to/output.pdf

# Use with curl to convert remote markdown
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ryuapp/md2pdf/main/README.md | md2pdf > README.pdf

Front matter (Experimental)

We can specify CSS file used in the front matter of markdown.

---
stylesheet: ./github.css
---

# Hello World

Related

• md-to-pdf - Markdown to PDF CLI for Node.js.