Visual Editor

The Quarto visual editor provides a WYSIWYM editing interface for all of Pandoc markdown, including tables, citations, cross-references, footnotes, divs/spans, definition lists, attributes, raw HTML/TeX, and more. The visual editor also includes support for executing code cells and viewing their output inline:

The visual editor doesn’t attempt to abstract away or obscure the underlying markdown document. Rather, it aims to provide a highly productive writing interface for people that love markdown. Most markdown constructs (e.g., # or **bold**) can be used directly for formatting.

Switching Modes

Markdown documents can be edited in either source or visual mode. To switch into visual mode for a given document, use the Source or Visual button at the top-left of the document toolbar (or alternatively the Ctrl+Shift+F4/Cmd+Shift+F4 F4 keyboard shortcut):

A snippet of an RStudio window showing the options bar at the top of a Quarto document.

It’s possible to switch between source and visual mode at any time (editing location and undo/redo state will be preserved when you switch).

Using the Editor

Keyboard Shortcuts

There are keyboard shortcuts for all basic editing tasks. Visual mode supports both traditional keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl + B or Cmd + B for bold) as well as markdown shortcuts (using markdown syntax directly). For example, enclose **bold** text in asterisks or type ## and press space to create a second level heading. Here are some of the most commonly used shortcuts:

Command	Keyboard Shortcut	Markdown Shortcut
Bold	⌘ B	`bold`
Italic	⌘ I	`italic`
Code	⌘ D	`code`
Link	⌘ K	`<href>`
Heading 1	⌥⌘ 1	`#`
Heading 2	⌥⌘ 2	`##`
Heading 3	⌥⌘ 3	`###`
R Code Chunk	⌥⌘ I	```{r}

See the editing shortcuts article for a complete list of all shortcuts.

Insert Anything

You can also use the catch-all Cmd+//Ctrl+/ shortcut to insert just about anything. Just execute the shortcut then type what you want to insert. For example:

There is a line of text (with a cursor at the end) where someone has typed '/lis'. There is a drop-down menu underneath this with options for 'Bullet List', 'Numbered List', and 'Definition List' arranged vertically. The title of each item is bolded, has a small icon to the left, and a small description in lighter gray text underneath it.

$There is a line of text (with a cursor at the end) where someone has typed '/ma'. There is a drop-down menu underneath this with options for 'Inline Math', 'Display Math', and 'Image...' arranged vertically. The title of each item is bolded, has a small icon to the left, and a small description in lighter gray text underneath it.$

If you are at the beginning of a line (as displayed above), you can also enter plain / to invoke the shortcut.

Editor Toolbar

The editor toolbar includes buttons for the most commonly used formatting commands:

A snippet of an RStudio window showing the options bar at the top of an R Markdown document.

Additional commands are available on the Format, Insert, and Table menus:

Format	Insert	Table

Learning More

See the following resources on https://quarto.org/ to learn more about visual markdown editing:

Technical Writing covers features commonly used in scientific and technical writing, including citations, cross-references, footnotes, equations, embedded code, and LaTeX.
Content Editing provides more depth on visual editor support for tables, lists, pandoc attributes, CSS styles, comments, symbols/emojis, etc.
Shortcuts & Options documents the two types of shortcuts you can use with the editor: standard keyboard shortcuts and markdown shortcuts and describes various options for configuring the editor.
Markdown Output describes how the visual editor parses and writes markdown and describes various ways you can customize this.