Convert PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files to Markdown by dropping them onto a window.
A small app for macOS and Windows, built on Microsoft's MarkItDown. No Python, no terminal, no setup — download it and drop a file.
Grab the latest build from the Releases page.
| Platform | File |
|---|---|
| macOS 11+ (Apple Silicon) | MarkItDrop.zip |
| Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit) | MarkItDrop-windows.zip |
This app is not signed with an Apple Developer certificate, so the first time you open it macOS shows "MarkItDrop" cannot be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software and refuses to launch.
This is expected. Here is how to allow it on macOS 15 Sequoia and later:
- Double-click the app — it gets blocked. Dismiss the dialog with Done
- Open System Settings → Privacy & Security
- Scroll down to the Security section. You will see "MarkItDrop" was blocked to protect your Mac
- Click Open Anyway
- Enter your administrator password, then click Open
You only need to do this once. After that, double-clicking works normally.
On macOS 14 Sonoma and earlier, the shortcut is simpler: right-click (or Control-click) the app, choose Open, then confirm with Open. Apple removed that shortcut in macOS 15, which is why the steps above go through System Settings.
Do not run the app from inside the zip. Windows lets you browse a zip as if it
were a folder, but launching the app from there copies only the .exe to a temp
directory and leaves the _internal folder behind. You get this error:
Failed to load Python DLL '...\_internal\python314.dll'
LoadLibrary: The specified module could not be found.
Click Extract all first, then open the extracted MarkItDrop folder and run
MarkItDrop.exe.
On the first launch, Windows SmartScreen shows "Windows protected your PC" because the app is not signed. Click More info → Run anyway.
Why unsigned? A certificate costs $99/year from Apple, and a few hundred more for Windows. This app is free and open source, so it ships unsigned. The source code is right here if you want to check it or build it yourself.
- Drag files onto the window (or click Add...)
- Uncheck anything you don't want to convert
- Edit the output name if you like
- Choose where to save — the source folder, or a folder you pick
- Click Convert
Existing files are never overwritten. If report.md already exists, the new file
becomes report-1.md.
| Documents | PDF, Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), Excel (.xlsx, .xls), EPub, Outlook (.msg) |
| Text | CSV, HTML, JSON, XML, Markdown, plain text |
Images, audio, and YouTube URLs are out of scope. MarkItDown itself supports them — use its command line tool if you need those.
Markdown is compact and keeps the structure of a document — headings, lists, tables, links — while dropping the layout noise. That makes it a good format to feed into an AI assistant like Claude or ChatGPT when you want it to read a document.
- macOS 11 or later, Apple Silicon. Intel Macs are not covered by the release build
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. Verified on both
Nothing else — Python and all dependencies are bundled.
python3 -m venv ~/.venvs/markitdrop
source ~/.venvs/markitdrop/bin/activate # Windows: .venvs\markitdrop\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python app.pymacOS note: don't create the virtual environment under
~/Documentsor~/Desktop. Those folders are protected by macOS privacy controls, and a process launched from Finder cannot read them — Python fails to start withPermissionError: ... pyvenv.cfg. Use a location like~/.venvs/instead.
app.py entry point
src/ui.py the window
src/converter.py conversion, runs on a worker thread
packaging/app.spec PyInstaller build definition (branches on the OS)
tools/make_icon.py regenerates the app icon (.icns and .ico)
Conversion runs on a separate thread — a large PDF takes a few seconds, and doing that on the UI thread would freeze the window.
pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller --noconfirm packaging/app.specThe result is dist/MarkItDrop.app on macOS, or the dist/MarkItDrop/ folder on
Windows — roughly 250 MB either way, since it bundles Python, Qt, and magika's
ONNX model.
Builds cannot be made for one platform from the other. Release binaries are produced by GitHub Actions, which runs both a macOS and a Windows job on every version tag.
MIT. See LICENSE.
MarkItDown itself is MIT licensed and copyright Microsoft Corporation.