# Markdown (deprecated)

Source: https://decapcms.org/docs/widgets/markdown/ (updated 2026-09-09)

*Markdown widget is being deprecated in favor of the richtext widget, which provides all the same features and more. We recommend switching to the richtext widget for a better editing experience and continued support.*

The markdown widget provides a full-fledged text editor, allowing users to format text with features such as headings and blockquotes. Users can change their editing view with a handy toggle button. 

*Please note:* If you want to use your markdown editor to fill a markdown file's contents after its frontmatter, you'll have to name the field `body` so the CMS recognizes it and saves the file accordingly.

**Name:** `markdown`

**UI:** full text editor

**Data type:** markdown

**Options**

* `default`: accepts markdown content
* `minimal`: accepts a boolean value, `false` by default. Sets the widget height to minimum possible.
* `buttons`: an array of strings representing the formatting buttons to display (all shown by default). Buttons include: `bold`, `italic`, `strikethrough`, `code`, `link`, `heading-one`, `heading-two`, `heading-three`, `heading-four`, `heading-five`, `heading-six`, `quote`, `bulleted-list`, and `numbered-list`.
* `editor_components`: an array of strings representing the names of editor components to display (all shown by default). Decap CMS includes `image` and `code-block` editor components by default, and custom components may be [created and registered](https://decapcms.org/docs/custom-widgets/#registereditorcomponent).
* `modes`: an array of strings representing the names of allowed editor modes. Possible modes are `raw` and `rich_text`. A toggle button appears in the toolbar when more than one mode is available.
* `sanitize_preview`: accepts a boolean value, `true` by default. Sanitizes the markdown preview to prevent XSS attacks and might alter the preview content. *This default changed from `false` to `true` in decap-cms@3.13.0 as a security hardening measure.*

**Example**

```yaml
- { label: 'Blog post content', name: 'body', widget: 'markdown' }
```

This would render as:

![Markdown widget example](https://decapcms.org/img/widgets-markdown.png)

*Please note:* The markdown widget outputs a raw markdown string. Your static site generator may or may not render the markdown to HTML automatically. Consult with your static site generator's documentation for more information about rendering markdown.

### Remark plugins

You can register plugins to customize [`remark`](https://github.com/remarkjs/remark), the library used by the richtext editor for serializing and deserializing markdown.

```js
// register a plugin
CMS.registerRemarkPlugin(plugin);

// provide global settings to all plugins, e.g. for customizing `remark-stringify`
CMS.registerRemarkPlugin({ settings: { bullet: '-' } });
```

Note that `decap-cms-widget-markdown` currently uses `remark@10`, so you should check a plugin's compatibility first.

**Result**

![toggle switch](https://decapcms.org/img/widget-markdown.png)