Markshift
Documents to Markdown
Only for Mac
Free
Mac
Word to PDF, Excel to CSV, PDF to JPEG, photos to Word with OCR. All on your Mac, nothing uploaded. And lean Markdown with token counts for your AI prompts.
Markshift converts your files on your Mac. Turn a Word file into a PDF, a spreadsheet into CSV, a PDF into images, or any document into lean Markdown for AI. Everything happens on the device. Nothing is uploaded, and the app makes no network connections at all.
PICK WHAT YOU WANT TO MAKE
Choose a format under Convert to, then drop in your files or a whole folder.
For AI: Markdown, Compact for AI or Readable
Documents: Word (.docx), PDF, Rich Text, OpenDocument Text, HTML and plain text
Spreadsheets: Excel (.xlsx) and CSV
Images: PNG, JPEG, HEIC and TIFF
WHAT IT READS
PDF, including scanned pages through on-device text recognition
Word, PowerPoint and Excel
OpenDocument text, presentations and spreadsheets
EPUB books, in proper reading order
Images, through on-device text recognition
Markdown, plain text, CSV, TSV, JSON, XML, YAML, HTML and RTF
FORMATTING THAT SURVIVES THE TRIP
Tables stay real tables in Word, PDF and Excel. Headings, bold, italic, links and numbered lists carry over. In spreadsheets, numbers stay numbers and IDs like 007 keep their leading zeros. Every sheet in a workbook comes along, and tables found in a Word file or PDF can go straight into Excel.
Make a photo of a page into an editable Word document, lay out Markdown notes as a clean PDF, or turn each page of a PDF into an image.
KNOW WHAT YOU'LL GET BEFORE YOU SAVE
Every file shows how faithfully it will convert, from Exact to Text only, with a list of what carries over and what changes. The preview is drawn from the actual file you are about to save. If a conversion doesn't make sense, such as a PDF to PDF, Markshift says so and suggests another format.
BUILT FOR SENDING DOCUMENTS TO AI
Sending a PDF straight to a language model spends a large part of your context on layout the model does not need. Markshift converts it to text first.
Compact for AI uses CSV tables instead of pipe tables, keeps JSON compact, and leaves out page headings. On a spreadsheet that is close to a fifth fewer tokens than a formatted Markdown table, with nothing removed from the content. Prefer the readable version? Choose Readable and get pipe tables, formatted JSON and page headings instead.
EXACT TOKEN COUNTS
Every Markdown result shows its token count, measured with the same byte-pair tokenizer the models use rather than estimated from file size. Choose the o200k tokenizer used by GPT-5, GPT-4o and the o-series, or cl100k for GPT-4, and see the total for a whole batch before you send anything.
QUALITY THAT FITS THE JOB
Fast, Balanced and Best settings control text recognition, page resolution and image compression. Best reads small print more carefully and rechecks PDF pages that have little embedded text.
BATCH CONVERSION THAT KEEPS YOUR MAC RESPONSIVE
Convert a mixed folder in one pass. Markshift detects your Mac and chooses how many files to process at once. It eases off when your Mac is hot, in Low Power Mode or short on memory, and the window stays responsive throughout. Progress is shown per file, and any conversion can be retried on its own.
Save everything to a folder in one step, save one file at a time, or export a ZIP with a report listing what was converted and anything that was simplified along the way. Markdown results can also be combined into one file.
MADE FOR MACOS
Universal app for Apple silicon and Intel
Open With support from Finder
Drag and drop, including folders
Keyboard shortcuts for adding, saving and copying
HONEST ABOUT ITS LIMITS
Markshift is not a replacement for Office. Fonts, exact page layout, charts and slide designs are not recreated, and formulas are saved as their values. Conversion notes tell you where formatting was simplified, where text recognition was used, and where a very large spreadsheet or book was truncated. You always know what you are looking at.
PRIVACY
No accounts. No analytics. No network access of any kind. Your documents never leave your Mac.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app has not received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Markshift 2.0 is a full file converter, not just a Markdown tool.
Convert to anything. Pick a format under Convert to: Markdown for AI, Word, PDF, RTF, ODT, HTML, plain text, Excel, CSV, PNG, JPEG, HEIC or TIFF. Everything is converted on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded.
Formatting survives. Tables stay real tables in Word, PDF and Excel. Headings, bold, italic and numbered lists carry over. Numbers in spreadsheets stay numbers, and IDs like 007 keep their zeros.
Know what you'll get. Each file shows how faithful the conversion will be, and lists what carried over and what changed. You see a preview of the actual file before you save it.
Still built for AI. Compact Markdown with token counts works as before, so you can fit more of your documents into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.
Also new
Fast, Balanced and Best quality settings
Sharper text recognition on scanned PDFs and photos
Runs natively on Intel Macs as well as Apple silicon, and adjusts to your Mac's speed, heat and battery
Stays responsive during large batches
Save everything to a folder or as a ZIP in one step
The developer, Kamalanarayanan Kamalakannan, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Provider
- Kamalanarayanan Kamalakannan
- Size
- 4.6 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
Requires macOS 15.0 or later.
- Mac
Requires macOS 15.0 or later.
- Mac
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Kamalanarayanan