Convert Markdown To PDF With Python

Overview

When I wanted a quick way to turn a Markdown file into a clean PDF, I did not need a full publishing pipeline. I needed one script that could take a file path, render the Markdown as HTML, and hand the final layout off to a browser-grade PDF engine that was already installed on the machine.

This script does exactly that. It accepts a Markdown filename as a parameter, converts the file to HTML with the markdown package, groups major sections to reduce ugly page breaks, then renders the result to PDF through an installed Chromium-based browser such as Chrome or Edge. The output PDF is written next to the source file and keeps the same base filename.

Requirements

• Python 3 installed and available on your PATH
• An installed Chromium-based browser such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge
• The markdown package in your virtual environment
• A Markdown file you want to convert, either passed by relative path or absolute path
• Permission to create a temporary HTML file during rendering and write the final PDF beside the source Markdown file

Key Capabilities

• Accepts a Markdown filename as a command-line argument
• Writes the PDF beside the source file with the same base filename
• Converts Markdown to HTML with support for tables, code blocks, and a table of contents
• Injects CSS directly into the generated HTML so there is no separate stylesheet to manage
• Groups h2 and h3 blocks into logical resume sections to reduce awkward page breaks
• Renders the final PDF with an installed Chrome or Edge browser
• Suppresses the default browser PDF headers and footers so the output does not include timestamps, local file paths, or page-number overlays
• Cleans up the temporary HTML file even when rendering fails

Download

How to Use

1. Download markdown_to_pdf.py to any working folder.
2. Create a virtual environment:

python -m venv .venv

3. Activate the virtual environment:

.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

4. Upgrade pip and install the required package inside the virtual environment:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install markdown

5. Make sure Chrome or Edge is installed locally, because the script uses that browser directly for PDF rendering.
6. Run the script and pass the Markdown file you want to convert:

python .\markdown_to_pdf.py .\resume.md

7. The script will create resume.pdf beside resume.md. You can also pass a full path if the Markdown file lives somewhere else.

Example Output

Reading markdown file: C:\resume\resume.md
Converting markdown to HTML...
Rendering with installed browser...
PDF saved successfully: C:\resume\resume.pdf

Notes

• The script writes the PDF next to the source Markdown file and keeps the same base filename.
• group_markdown_blocks() is especially useful for resume-style Markdown where ## starts a major section and ### starts an entry inside that section.
• This version of the script depends on a locally installed Chrome or Edge browser and does not use Playwright or pdfkit.
• If PowerShell blocks Activate.ps1, run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process Bypass for the current shell and then activate the virtual environment again.
• The HTML grouping step uses xml.etree.ElementTree, so heavily customized raw HTML inside the Markdown may require a different parser or some defensive cleanup first.