How to read markdown tables on a phone

Updated: 2026-10-29

Markdown tables are written like this:

| Plan  | Price | Storage | Support |
|-------|------:|---------|---------|
| Free  |    $0 | 5 GB    | Email   |
| Pro   |    $8 | 100 GB  | Chat    |

In a plain text app on a phone, that turns into wrapped lines of | characters that are almost impossible to follow. Even some markdown apps squeeze every column onto the screen until each cell is one word wide.

What makes a table readable on a phone

• Horizontal scrolling. The table keeps its natural width and you swipe sideways. Text in each cell stays on one or two lines.
• Alignment. ---: means right-aligned (good for numbers) and :---: means centered. A proper viewer respects that.
• Readable cells. Bold, code and links inside cells should be formatted too.

Reading tables in MD Reader

MD Reader renders GitHub-style tables. Wide tables scroll sideways within the page, so the rest of the document doesn't move.

1. Open the .md file, or paste the text with Paste from clipboard.
2. Swipe left and right on the table to see all columns.
3. Turn the phone sideways for very wide tables. You'll see more columns at once.

Get it on Google Play

Tips for big tables

• Use landscape or a tablet. On tablets and foldables MD Reader uses a wider layout. See reading on tablets and foldables.
• Change the page width. In Reading settings, set Page width to Wide or Full to give tables more room. See comfortable reading settings.
• Make text smaller for one document if you need to compare many columns.

Tables from AI answers

ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini love tables for comparisons. When you copy an answer, the table comes as markdown source. Paste it into MD Reader to see it as a real table. See reading ChatGPT answers as formatted markdown.

Why does my table show as plain text?

Common causes:

• There's no header separator row (|---|---|) under the first line.
• A blank line is missing before the table.
• The rows have different numbers of | columns.

Fix those in the source (Edit markdown source in MD Reader), and the table renders.