Which application to preview .md files?

Question

Is there an application to preview markdown files (.md files) on OSX (for instance on Maverick)?

score 81 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 29 '22 at 15:50

81

The superuser question, Markdown Live Preview Editor?, provides a wealth of options:

In additional to those, you can install a markdown QuickLook plugin for Finder based previews.

MarkdownLive

Mou

Marked 2

Marked2

edited Mar 29 '22 at 15:50

cambunctious

145

answered Feb 11 '14 at 09:39

Graham Miln

43,776

The QuickLook plug-in does not work with Mavericks. – Colas Feb 24 '14 at 12:56
2

Regarding the QuickLook plug-in, please consider adding your voice to https://github.com/toland/qlmarkdown/issues/29; or, as the project is open source, having a go at fixing up the code. – Graham Miln Feb 24 '14 at 15:54
http://alternativeto.net/software/mou/?platform=mac has updated list of markdown preview (and/or) editor – Tun Sep 25 '16 at 05:54
1

Fyi, yhe QuickLook plugin does work with El Capitan 10.11.6 – duthen Dec 07 '16 at 23:02
2

For me, based on running through your ist, MacDown was the simplest to install and use quickly. Thanks for showing the options! – Sean Aug 26 '18 at 23:58
Mou has been abandoned essentially. No update in a couple of years. – Franklin Yu Sep 07 '18 at 18:09
1

Just to add. I tried the BBEdit markdown preview and the default style is quite plain, but I found you can download a custom CSS file to make it look more stylish. – Bill Feb 05 '22 at 22:28
1

toland/qlmarkdown has been abandoned, and replaced with sbarex/QLMarkdown, which installs QLMarkdown.app, which must be run to activate the plugin. This is what you get with brew install --cask qlmarkdown today, thankfully. – gimboland Feb 19 '22 at 13:40

score 21 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 19 '17 at 05:33

21

Visual Studio Code

Source: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/markdown#_markdown-preview

Microsoft's Visual Studio Code has been surprisingly pleasant to use as a general purpose IDE, and elegantly renders markdown.

edited Sep 19 '17 at 05:33

nohillside

100,768

answered May 31 '17 at 20:54

Peter

319

You can right-click on the editor Tab and select Open Preview (⇧⌘V) or use the Command Palette (⇧⌘P) to run the Markdown: Open Preview to the Side command (⌘K V). The Open Preview Tab is the guy that looks like a book with a magnifying glass. – PatrickT Apr 22 '21 at 08:08

score 19 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 18 '15 at 10:48

19

I would like to add the excellent - and open source - MacDown to the list.

answered Sep 18 '15 at 10:48

ws6079

301

score 12 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 13 '24 at 11:53

12

If you would like markdown to be read with Quick Look, you can use QLMarkdown.

You can install it either by:

Download the QLMarkdown.qlgenerator in either ~/Library/QuickLook (current user) or /Library/QuickLook (all users).
Using Homebrew, run brew install --cask qlmarkdown in the Terminal. (updated)

If you find qlmarkdown Applications, right click and open the app, it will get around the Apple security check warning.

After that, you should be able to view markdown files.

edited Feb 13 '24 at 11:53

CousinCocaine

10,098

answered Sep 03 '17 at 04:57

Thunderforge

2,093

2

Why the downvote? A mod suggested I post this here after posting it on a duplicate question. I had thought it would be welcome here. – Thunderforge Sep 03 '17 at 05:23
If I had to guess, It's probably because the accepted answer already linked and mentioned the QuickLook generator for Markdown files and there is no need to have redundant answers. – user3439894 Sep 03 '17 at 05:33
The new version of QLMarkdown is here now: https://github.com/sbarex/qlmarkdown – postylem Apr 04 '22 at 02:52
Error: `brew cask` is no longer a `brew` command. Use `brew <command> --cask` instead.
So the update to the command would be:

$brew install --cask qlmarkdown
– ximbal Aug 21 '23 at 19:56

Tony Williams · Answer 5 · 2017-06-01T01:02:25.663

8

The perfect preview tool for Markdown is Marked 2 which gives a preview of your Markdown and watches the file so that every time you save in an editor your preview is updated.

It also supports custom pre-processors so you can use extra markup such as critic, custom CSS so you can have a preview that looks however you wish and tools to export the result in a variety of formats. It can even track an entire folder and start previewing a different file when you start to edit it.

Taken together all that means that you can write your Markdown in any editor you like and preview and output easily.

You might want to think about installing qlmarkdown which gives you the ability to preview MarkDown files properly in the Finder using QuickLook.

edited Jun 01 '17 at 01:02

answered Feb 11 '14 at 10:03

Tony Williams

12,142

As of today, qlmarkdown isn't working properly on Catalina 10.15.4 – Seamus Apr 01 '20 at 23:38
1

The QLMarkdown project linked to seems to be abandoned, but there is a new QLMarkdown now at https://github.com/sbarex/qlmarkdown, which I can confirm works on macOS 12.3... – postylem Apr 04 '22 at 02:54

score 7 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 11 '20 at 10:24

7

If you are using sublimetext, then you can use MARKDOWN PREVIEW package from package manager.

It has multiple styles like GITHUB, HTML and etc.

https://www.sublimetext.com

https://facelessuser.github.io/MarkdownPreview/

edited Mar 11 '20 at 10:24

anki

11,753

answered Jul 27 '15 at 11:11

Muthukumar Anbalagan

181

Inside Sublime you will need to go to Tools and install the Command Palette. To preview a Markdown file go to Tools --> Command Palette... --> Markdown Preview: Preview in Browser and choose markdown. – mabalenk Dec 17 '19 at 11:21

score 6 · Answer 7 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

6

There is also Markoff (App Store, GitHub), a pure viewer for CommonMark files:

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 19 '17 at 04:41

Aristotle Pagaltzis

318

Barry McNamara · Answer 8 · 2017-07-19T16:47:26.330

3

If you'd rather not install a new application, there are browser extensions for this. I use Markdown Viewer for Google Chrome, which allows Chrome to open markdown files and displays them like GitHub would. Then just set your browser as the default application to open .md files (or use open with if you'd rather have an editor be the default program).

edited Jul 19 '17 at 16:47

answered Jul 19 '17 at 15:45

Barry McNamara

131

1

@Jackson1442 this actually is an answer providing a solution to the question asked. It could be improved by explaining in more detail how this plugin can be used to render locally-stored Markdown files. – nohillside Jul 19 '17 at 16:14
@patrix - oops! I misread this answer. Really badly! My apologies, Barry! – jacksonwelsh Jul 19 '17 at 16:16
I think this is a very reasonable approach, but I don't necessarily agree with making a browser the default program for viewing .md files. I write in Markdown, and having a browser as the default app would be a nuisance. But it wouldn't be as big a nuisance as installing XCode - it makes itself the default handler for .md files,... and when you allow it to try, it wants to download more stuff! Sheesh! At 5GB, you think they could find room for a markdown app! – Seamus Apr 01 '20 at 22:57
don't forget you might need to give the plugin access to file urls - type chrome://extensions in the address bar, then select options for the Markdown Viewer and switch access to file urls to on – TheEye Nov 10 '20 at 15:33

score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Apr 02 '20 at 00:02

A lot of ideas here, but most of them are old, some even out-of-date. I came here looking for a previewer - not an editor (as the question says). However, it seems most of the answers are editors. So I'll add this answer for the editor I use. It's still actively under development, open-source, fairly easy-to-use and flexible: Typora.

robd · Answer 10 · 2020-12-16T20:22:52.193

2

There is also a newish option called Obsidian - https://obsidian.md/, which more of a networked thought tool (like Roam Research) but build on top of markdown files.

edited Dec 16 '20 at 20:22

answered Dec 16 '20 at 18:17

robd

1,070

How does this help to preview .md files? – nohillside Dec 16 '20 at 18:20
Added a screenshot of the preview screen – robd Dec 16 '20 at 20:23
Exactly what I was looking for: simple and easy to browse a folder structure with .md files! 10 000 thanks ! – Warnaud Mar 15 '21 at 08:07
This must be amongst the most underrated responses ever supplied on stack overflow. – Mark Hamlin Oct 27 '21 at 09:42

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 27 '15 at 11:57

1

If you're using the Terminal, I made a thing in Node.

answered Jul 27 '15 at 11:57

Mr_Chimp

131

score 1 · Answer 12 · edited Jun 08 '22 at 14:30

1

Panic Nova can view the file:

open the file in Panic Nova
click the preview icon ( eye )

edited Jun 08 '22 at 14:30

agarza

2,274

answered Jun 08 '22 at 10:26

al404IT

142
7

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Mar 29 '22 at 21:20

0

I just set a proportional serif font in VS Code, add some limited colors, and the normal, inline display is fine.

answered Mar 29 '22 at 21:20

Matthias Winkelmann

740

Which application to preview .md files?

13 Answers13

MarkdownLive

Mou

Marked 2

Visual Studio Code

Linked

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