# Upstream Issues Fixed in MkDocs NG

MkDocs NG is a maintained fork of [mkdocs/mkdocs], which is no longer under
active development. Beyond keeping up with new Python releases and
dependencies, the fork resolves long-standing issues that were reported
upstream but never fixed there.

This page tracks notable upstream issues that are already resolved in MkDocs
NG. If you are affected by one of them, upgrading is a one-line change — the
package name on PyPI is `mkdocs-ng`, while the `mkdocs` command and all
configuration stay the same:

```bash
pip install -U mkdocs-ng
```

## Configuration

Upstream issue | Symptom | Fixed in
-------------- | ------- | --------
[#2624] | `INHERIT` accepted a single parent file, so splitting a configuration into several files required chaining them one after another. It now accepts a list of files. | 1.9.0 (#107)

## Development server

Upstream issue | Symptom | Fixed in
-------------- | ------- | --------
[#4032], [#4014], [#4055], [#4081] | With `click>=8.2`, `mkdocs serve` stopped watching for file changes, live reload only worked when `--livereload` was passed explicitly (often misdiagnosed as a WSL problem), and `use_directory_urls` was overridden. | 1.7.0 (#4), 1.7.3 (#60)
[#2519] | Editor temporary files (vim swap files, `~` backups, Emacs auto-save) triggered pointless rebuilds. | 1.7.3 (#55)
[#3496] | `mkdocs serve` failed when port 8000 was already in use, for example by another `mkdocs serve`. It now serves on the next free port (up to 8010) and says so. | 1.11.0
[#4001] | Edge-case markup such as `<<>>` crashed the build with `AssertionError` from Python's `html.parser` (seen on Python 3.13.5+). | 1.7.3 (#51)

## Built-in themes

Upstream issue | Symptom | Fixed in
-------------- | ------- | --------
[#2171] | Built-in themes loaded resources from CDNs, sharing visitor data with third parties and breaking offline use. highlight.js is now bundled locally and the themes contain no CDN references. | 1.8.0 (#75)
[#3630] | The long-dead Universal Analytics (`analytics.js`) snippet was hardcoded into the themes. It is removed; use `analytics.gtag` (GA4) or override the `analytics` template block. | 1.8.0 (#84)
[#4045] | Disabling `highlightjs` broke switching between light and dark mode in the mkdocs theme. | 1.7.1 (#39)

## Markdown

Upstream issue | Symptom | Fixed in
-------------- | ------- | --------
[#3772] | Loading your own Markdown extension from the project needed `PYTHONPATH` set by hand or a package to install. The new [`markdown_extensions_path`](../user-guide/configuration.md#markdown_extensions_path) setting names directories to load them from. | 1.11.0
[#3914] | Links to other sites couldn't be told apart from internal links in the HTML, so themes couldn't mark them. They now get `rel="external"`. | 1.11.0
[#3997] | GitHub-style alerts (`> [!NOTE]`, `> [!WARNING]` and so on) showed up as a quote starting with `[!NOTE]`. They now render as admonitions. | 1.11.0

## Search

Upstream issue | Symptom | Fixed in
-------------- | ------- | --------
[#4167] | Searching for words that happen to be English stop words — `while`, `if`, `for`, `from` and many more — returned no results, even though they are meaningful keywords in technical documentation. Stop words are now indexed by default; a `stop_words` plugin option restores the old behavior. | 1.8.0 (#80)
[#4106] | In browsers without Web Worker support, search replaced the page's global `window.postMessage` function, breaking other scripts that rely on it. The fallback now leaves it alone (and no longer depends on jQuery or on the site being served from the domain root). | 1.9.0 (#106)

## Navigation

Upstream issue | Symptom | Fixed in
-------------- | ------- | --------
[#3450] | The project's root directory couldn't be the `docs_dir`, so a small project couldn't keep its Markdown files next to `mkdocs.yml`. `docs_dir: .` now works; the config file and the `site_dir` are left out of the site. | 1.11.0
[#3710] | When the same page was listed more than once in `nav` under different titles, every entry showed the title of the first one. Each entry now keeps its own title. | 1.9.0 (#103)
[#4026] | A `nav` entry that links to a section of a page (`page.md#anchor` or `page/#anchor`) was reported as "not found in the documentation files", failing `strict` builds; the `page.md#anchor` form also produced a broken link. Both forms now work without a warning. | 1.9.0 (#104)

## Validation

Upstream issue | Symptom | Fixed in
-------------- | ------- | --------
[#3690] | Anchor validation reported false positives for anchors generated late by Markdown extensions, e.g. `pymdownx.tabbed` with `combine_header_slug`. | 1.7.1 (#34)
[#3696] | Using a deprecated configuration option — including deprecated options of plugins — emitted a WARNING, so `strict` builds failed although the option still worked or was harmless. Deprecation notices are now logged at INFO level. | 1.9.0 (#102)
[#3703] | The "does not contain an anchor" warning gave no hint when the only problem was letter case; it now suggests the correct anchor (`did you mean '#conflicts'?`). | 1.8.0 (#83)
[#3952] | Links with a text fragment (`page.md#:~:text=some%20words`) were reported as pointing to a missing anchor. The text fragment is now ignored; only an anchor before it is checked. | 1.11.0
[#4126] | `mkdocs build --quiet --strict` exited successfully even when there were warnings, because `--quiet` stopped warnings from being counted. Warnings are now still counted in `strict` mode; only their output is silenced. | 1.9.0 (#101)

## Plugins

Upstream issue | Symptom | Fixed in
-------------- | ------- | --------
[#3709] | `on_page_context` got no access to the Jinja environment that renders the page, so plugins couldn't add filters or globals for one page. Handlers that take an `env` keyword now receive it; others are called as before. | 1.11.0

## Python API

Upstream issue | Symptom | Fixed in
-------------- | ------- | --------
[#1240] | No stable programmatic API — running MkDocs from Python code required subprocess calls or private imports. MkDocs NG provides `mkdocs.build()` and `mkdocs.serve()`. | 1.8.0 (#76)

## Output for LLMs

Upstream issue | Symptom | Fixed in
-------------- | ------- | --------
[#3973] | No way to publish the documentation's Markdown for LLMs and coding agents; converting the HTML back to Markdown loses precision. The built-in `llms_txt` plugin publishes each page's Markdown and an `llms.txt` index. | 1.9.0 (#105)

## Also worth knowing

*   Python 3.13, 3.14, and 3.15 are fully supported and tested, while
  upstream's last release predates them.
*   Found another upstream issue you'd like to see fixed here? Please
  [open an issue].

[mkdocs/mkdocs]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs
[#1240]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/1240
[#2171]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/2171
[#2519]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/2519
[#2624]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/2624
[#3450]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3450
[#3496]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3496
[#3630]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3630
[#3690]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3690
[#3696]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3696
[#3703]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3703
[#3709]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3709
[#3710]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3710
[#3772]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3772
[#3914]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3914
[#3952]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3952
[#3973]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3973
[#3997]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/3997
[#4001]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/4001
[#4014]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/4014
[#4026]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/4026
[#4032]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/4032
[#4045]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/4045
[#4055]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/4055
[#4081]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/4081
[#4106]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/4106
[#4126]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/4126
[#4167]: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/4167
[open an issue]: https://github.com/mkdocs-ng/mkdocs/issues