Generate a PDF file out of MkDocs

This page describes how to generate a PDF file from the MkDocs documentation using mkdocs-exporter.

PDF Export from MkDocs

MkDocs does not natively support PDF generation. However, the MkDocs plugins provides several solutions to export the documentation as a PDF. Popular plugins include mkdocs-pdf-export-plugin and mkdocs-with-pdf, However this how-to focuses on mkdocs-exporter.

Installing mkdocs-exporter

First, install the mkdocs-exporter package using pip:

pip install mkdocs-exporter

Additionally, Playwright needs to install browser binaries that it uses to render pages. Run the following to install those browsers:

playwright install

Configuring mkdocs-exporter

Add the plugin to the mkdocs.yml configuration file with the basic settings:

plugins:
  - exporter:
      formats:
        pdf:
          enabled: true
          concurrency: 8

The concurrency setting controls how many pages are rendered in parallel, speeding up the PDF generation process.

Aggregating into a Single PDF

By default, the exporter generates individual PDF files for each page. To combine all pages into a single PDF document, enable the aggregator option:

plugins:
  - exporter:
      formats:
        pdf:
          enabled: true
          concurrency: 8
          aggregator:
            enabled: true
            covers: all
            output: output.pdf

Generating the PDF

After configuration, generate the PDF by running:

mkdocs build

For the configured aggregation, the combined PDF will be located at site/output.pdf. Individual page PDFs are also generated and placed in the same site/ directory alongside the static HTML files.