A fast, lightweight markdown viewer for Linux built with Rust and egui. Designed for distraction-free reading with excellent typography, syntax highlighting, and LaTeX math — from quick notes to scientific papers.
- GitHub Flavored Markdown - Full GFM support including tables, task lists, footnotes, and recognized emoji shortcodes such as
:pushpin: - LaTeX Math - Inline
$…$and display$$…$$equations rendered via typst + mitex — fractions, sub/superscripts,\boxed, accents, matrices, and more — sized and baseline-aligned to the surrounding text - Syntax Highlighting - 200+ languages via syntect with beautiful color schemes
- Mermaid Diagrams - Flowcharts, sequence diagrams, and more rendered natively via merman (click to enlarge)
- Tables that fit their content - Column widths follow what each column actually needs, cell text wraps instead of clipping, and widths are optimized so rows wrap less; drag the dividers to override
- HTML Tables - Rendered as formatted grids with proper cell padding
- YAML Frontmatter - A leading
---block renders as a key/value table instead of raw text - Images & SVG - Embedded and remote image support (PNG, JPEG, GIF, SVG, HTTP URLs)
- Unicode Support - System font fallbacks (Noto, DejaVu) for emojis, CJK, and non-Latin scripts
- 60 FPS Rendering - Viewport virtualization keeps scroll smooth on 100k+ line docs
- Typography - 1.5x line height for optimal readability (WCAG 2.1 compliant)
200+ languages via syntect, and mermaid diagrams rendered natively
Wide tables, same document and same window width. In v0.1.17 the last three columns were cut off at the pane edge and reachable only by scrolling the table sideways; in 0.2.0 every column fits and long cell text wraps instead of being clipped
| v0.1.17 | 0.2.0 |
|---|---|
 |
 |
A leading --- block renders as a key/value table rather than raw text; nested items and folded scalars keep their source spelling
- Tab System - Open multiple documents with tab bar (Ctrl+Click links to open in new tab)
- In-Document Search (Ctrl+F) - Find bar with inline highlights, Enter/Shift+Enter to cycle matches
- File Explorer - Hierarchical sidebar with lazy-loading directories and sorting options; freely resizable, width remembered
- Open Folder - Use File → Open Folder… to choose and persist the file explorer root
- Outline Sidebar - Click-to-navigate table of contents from document headers; freely resizable, width remembered
- Navigation Buttons - Back/forward buttons in title bar for quick history navigation
- Per-Tab History - Independent back/forward navigation within each tab (Alt+Left/Right)
- Internal Links - Navigate between markdown files with relative links
Find bar with inline highlights and a match counter; Enter and Shift+Enter cycle
- Dark & Light Themes - Toggle with Ctrl+D
- Zoom - 50% to 300% zoom (Ctrl++/-/0 or Ctrl+Scroll)
- Full Width - Toggle between the reading-width column and the full content pane; prose and tables follow it together
- Formula Size - Scale rendered math from 100% to 150% (View → Formula Size), independent of UI zoom
- Keyboard Scrolling - Scroll documents with ↑/↓ by line or Page Up/Page Down by page when the find bar is closed
- Live Reload - Auto-refresh on file changes (enabled by default)
- Custom Colors - Customize highlight and link text colors (View → Colors…)
- Font Selection - Browse and apply installed system fonts via View menu (searchable, persistent)
- Smooth Text Rendering - Optional toggle (View → Smooth Text Rendering) that disables glyph pixel-snapping for less jagged-looking text at fractional zoom levels
Full Width, Formula Size and the colour picker all live in the View menu
The same document on both themes — syntax highlighting, mermaid diagrams and both sidebars
| Dark | Light |
|---|---|
 |
 |
- Drag and Drop - Drop markdown files onto the window to open
- Native Dialogs - System file and folder picker integration
- Welcome Page & Recent Files - Open files or folders from the idle screen and reopen recent documents
- Session Persistence - Remembers open tabs, theme, zoom, and sidebar state
- Cross-Platform - Works on X11 and Wayland
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+T | Open file in new tab |
| Ctrl+W | Close current tab |
| Ctrl+Tab | Next tab |
| Ctrl+Shift+Tab | Previous tab |
| Ctrl+1-9 | Switch to tab 1-9 |
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+O | Open file in new tab |
| Alt+Left | Navigate back in history |
| Alt+Right | Navigate forward in history |
| Click link | Navigate in current tab |
| Ctrl+Click link | Open link in new tab |
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+F | Open find bar (or refocus if already open) |
| Enter / ↓ | Jump to next match |
| Shift+Enter / ↑ | Jump to previous match |
| Esc | Close find bar and clear highlights |
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+D | Toggle dark/light mode |
| Ctrl+Shift+E | Toggle file explorer |
| Ctrl+Shift+O | Toggle outline sidebar |
| Ctrl++ / Ctrl+= | Zoom in |
| Ctrl+- | Zoom out |
| Ctrl+0 | Reset zoom to 100% |
| ↑ / ↓ (when find bar is closed) | Scroll document up/down by line |
| Page Up / Page Down | Scroll document up/down by page |
| Ctrl+Scroll | Zoom with mouse wheel |
| Shift+Scroll over a wide table | Scroll the table horizontally |
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| F5 | Toggle file watching |
| Ctrl+Q | Quit application |
Downloads the prebuilt binary for your platform, verifies its SHA256, and installs the binary to ~/.local/bin plus bundled third-party notices under ~/.local/share/licenses/md-viewer. No compilation, takes seconds.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aydiler/md-viewer/main/scripts/install.sh | shSupports Linux x86_64 and macOS arm64 (Apple Silicon). Set INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin to install elsewhere. Intel Macs need to build from source via cargo install md-viewer.
On Linux, Open File and Open Folder need either a working XDG Desktop
Portal FileChooser (plus the gdbus command used to detect it), or Python 3
with Tkinter for the fallback dialog. You can check the fallback with
python3 -c 'import tkinter'. Common Tkinter package names are python3-tk on
Debian/Ubuntu, python3-tkinter on Fedora/RHEL, and python plus tk on Arch.
macOS Gatekeeper note: binaries are not yet signed/notarized. If macOS refuses to run the app, run:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/.local/bin/md-viewer
sudo snap install md-viewerAuto-updates via snapd.
yay -S md-viewer-git # or: paru -S md-viewer-gitBuilds from the latest main commit (rolling) — your system update grabs new versions automatically.
Once published to Flathub:
flatpak install flathub io.github.aydiler.md-viewer(Flathub submission in progress — see flatpak/ and PUBLISHING.md.)
Download md-viewer-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip from the latest release, extract md-viewer.exe, and run it. Verify the included .sha256 if you'd like.
cargo install md-viewerCompiles locally (~2–3 minutes). Update with cargo install --force md-viewer. Requires the system dependencies listed below.
git clone https://github.com/aydiler/md-viewer
cd md-viewer
cargo build --release
make install # installs to ~/.local/bin (optional)
make uninstall # removes the local installationOnly needed for cargo install / building from source:
sudo pacman -S --needed \
base-devel clang pkg-config \
libxcb libxkbcommon openssl \
gtk3 fontconfig dbus zenity \
xdg-desktop-portal xdg-desktop-portal-gtk \
python tk# Open a file and return the terminal prompt (live reload is enabled by default)
md-viewer README.md
# Keep the viewer attached to the terminal for debugging/logs
md-viewer --foreground README.md
# Disable live reload
md-viewer README.md --no-watchRun md-viewer with no file to start on the welcome page, then choose Open File, Open Folder, or a recent document. Opening a file always creates or focuses its tab; use the + button, File → Open File in New Tab…, Ctrl+T, or Ctrl+O. Use File → Open Folder… to choose the file explorer root.
When launched from a terminal, md-viewer detaches by default so the shell prompt is available while the window stays open. Use --foreground when you want terminal logs or blocking process behavior.
- Binary size: ~35 MB (includes syntax highlighting, mermaid renderer, math rendering, image support, X11+Wayland). ~7 MB as snap.
- Startup time: < 200ms
- Rendering: 60 FPS with viewport-based clipping
- Memory: Uses mimalloc for improved allocation performance
- Platform: Linux (X11 and Wayland via glow backend)
- eframe/egui - Immediate mode GUI framework
- egui_commonmark - Markdown rendering (vendored fork with typography, math, and alignment improvements)
- emojis - GitHub/gemoji shortcode lookup data (
(MIT OR Apache-2.0) AND Unicode-3.0; seeTHIRD_PARTY_NOTICES) - typst + mitex - LaTeX math rendering (LaTeX → typst → rasterized inline)
- merman - Mermaid diagram rendering
- syntect - Syntax highlighting
- notify - File watching
- rfd - Native file dialogs
MIT