Commenting on and viewing formatted markdown in Pull Request

[ckumick-va]

Select Topic Area

Product Feedback

Body

We are increasing our use of Markdown files, but the Pull Request files view shows the raw Markdown text. Reviewers would find it easier to review Markdown if they could see and comment on the diff of the formatted Markdown inside the Pull Request without leaving to View File mode. The raw Markdown diff is still valuable, so we should not lose that.

Current Markdown Diff:

Proposed Markdown Rendered Diff:

[github-actions[bot]]

💬 Your Product Feedback Has Been Submitted 🎉

Thank you for taking the time to share your insights with us! Your feedback is invaluable as we build a better GitHub experience for all our users.

Here's what you can expect moving forward ⏩

• Your input will be carefully reviewed and cataloged by members of our product teams. 
  • Due to the high volume of submissions, we may not always be able to provide individual responses.
  • Rest assured, your feedback will help chart our course for product improvements.
• Other users may engage with your post, sharing their own perspectives or experiences. 
• GitHub staff may reach out for further clarification or insight. 
  • We may 'Answer' your discussion if there is a current solution, workaround, or roadmap/changelog post related to the feedback.

Where to look to see what's shipping 👀

• Read the Changelog for real-time updates on the latest GitHub features, enhancements, and calls for feedback.
• Explore our Product Roadmap, which details upcoming major releases and initiatives.

What you can do in the meantime 💻

• Upvote and comment on other user feedback Discussions that resonate with you.
• Add more information at any point! Useful details include: use cases, relevant labels, desired outcomes, and any accompanying screenshots.

As a member of the GitHub community, your participation is essential. While we can't promise that every suggestion will be implemented, we want to emphasize that your feedback is instrumental in guiding our decisions and priorities.

Thank you once again for your contribution to making GitHub even better! We're grateful for your ongoing support and collaboration in shaping the future of our platform. ⭐

[Tamanna-Sharma8]

This would indeed improve the PR review experience, especially as more teams adopt Markdown for documentation and design discussions.

A rendered Markdown diff alongside the raw diff would allow reviewers to evaluate formatting, structure, and readability changes directly within the PR, without repeatedly switching to file view. At the same time, keeping the raw Markdown diff available is important for reviewing precise content edits.

A possible improvement could be:

• Toggle between Raw Markdown Diff and Rendered Markdown Diff.
• Inline comments mapped to the rendered view while still referencing the underlying source lines.
• Support for common Markdown extensions used in documentation workflows.

This would make documentation reviews much smoother while preserving existing diff workflows for technical reviewers.

[FrankLedo]

Our team uses PRs to review technical design documents (IDFs, impact analyses, architecture plans) stored as markdown. The rich diff toggle exists, which is great for seeing what changed — but we can't leave inline comments on the rendered view. We have to mentally map rendered content back to raw diff lines to comment.

For documentation-heavy PRs where the content matters more than the code, being able to read and comment on the rendered markdown directly would make PR-based document review as effective as Confluence or Google Docs, but with the full PR workflow (approvals, CI, history).

Our specific workflow: engineers write design docs as .md files, open a draft PR, and share the PR link for review. Reviewers use the rich diff to read the formatted document, but when they want to comment on a specific section they have to switch back to the raw diff, find the right lines, and comment there. This friction pushes teams back to Confluence/Google Docs, which loses the benefits of version control and code review workflows.

The ask: allow inline comments on the rendered (rich diff) markdown view, mapped back to the underlying source lines.

[hui-zheng]

Does gitlab have such feature? If so, it will become compelling for some of us to switch

[chienyuanchang]

Hi! @ckumick-va! This is a browser extension I'm working on. It might help with this in the meantime. Please feel free to have a try.

• Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/rich-diff-comments-for-gi/bdkcmcdfnhonfcpdgcmemkpcmnhnhemj
• Edge: https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/agomibenjlnikaldoddminkjbokfocgb

It lets you leave inline comments directly on the rendered markdown in GitHub PR rich diffs. Feedback welcome!

[jdolitsky]

I also just built an extension for this! https://github.com/jdolitsky/marky-mouse-clubhouse

It would be really great to have this built into the GitHub UI, especially with various tools recently building around Markdown/.md files

[atillacarbon]

+1, would love this!

We’re increasingly using .md for RFCs, architecture docs, and technical decisions in the same repo as our code.

With AI-native workflows, having code, docs, Mermaid diagrams, history, and review all in one place is becoming really valuable.

The missing piece is inline comments on the rendered Markdown diff. Having to switch back to raw Markdown to comment makes document reviews unnecessarily painful.

This would make GitHub a much stronger place for code + engineering docs + AI workflows.