Markdown formatted view shows a blank preview with Underscores in code blocks

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  nampara17 · Member · May 30, 2026 at 12:16 pm

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  I have noticed that if you add an underscore in your code block it will cause the markdown preview to show a blank screen. For example:

    TEMPLATE_PROJECT.capcut

  This is within a code block and therefore you should be able to use single underscores without affecting the markdown view, but in my tests by adding an underscore (even though within a code block) it causes the markdown preview to show a blank screen.

  If you change the underscore to (for example) a hyphen the markdown preview shows correctly? E.g.

    TEMPLATE-PROJECT.capcut

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  nampara17 · Member · May 30, 2026 at 12:35 pm

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  Also if you have markdown that would be interpreted incorrectly it will totally blank out the whole thing. For example if you want to display a number of stars in a table with:

  *****

  To represent 5 stars it will cause your entire preview in markdown to fail

  In this case it is essential to replace the invalid characters with the escape character before each:

  *****

  And that will now render the markdown and not show a blank screen.

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  nampara17 · Member · May 30, 2026 at 12:38 pm

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  That previous comment rendered incorrecly the second set of ‘stars’ should of been shown like this:

  *****
  

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  nampara17 · Member · May 30, 2026 at 12:40 pm

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  ARhhhh cannot get it to display backslash followed by a star five times as it renders it just as stars in this editor!

  *****

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  tamiratb · Staff · June 19, 2026 at 6:58 pm

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  Hi @nampara17!

  Thanks for the detailed report and examples.

  Could you let us know which platform and version of Simplenote you’re experiencing this on? There was a known issue with blank markdown previews that has been fixed in the latest service release, which you can try out in one of these ways:

  • Web app: app.simplenote.com
  • Desktop (Windows/Mac/Linux etc…): Download the latest version from our releases page

  Please give that a try and let us know if the issue still happens.

  Looking forward to hearing back!

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  nampara17 · Member · June 20, 2026 at 9:42 am

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  “There was a known issue with blank markdown previews that has been fixed in the latest service release“

  I generally use the online version but it says: 2.25.0 beta1 ? Surely the online version would upgrade automatically when next online?

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  tamiratb · Staff · June 26, 2026 at 7:41 pm

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  Thanks for following up @nampara17!

  You’re right that the web version is currently on an older version (2.25.0-beta.1) and hasn’t received the fix yet. The fix for the blank markdown preview was included in the desktop app updates (v2.26.1), but the web app hasn’t been updated to match.

  Unfortunately, the web app doesn’t update automatically at the moment – it requires a separate deployment. The team is aware of that and it’s on their radar to address.

  In the meantime, if this is a blocker for you, you could use the desktop app (available for macOS, Windows, and Linux), which includes the markdown preview fix.

  As a potential workaround on the web version, you can escape special characters with a backslash (e.g., _) to prevent the blank preview.

  Best,