A lightweight command-line tool that converts markdown files to styled HTML and opens them in your default browser. Supports GitHub Flavored Markdown, Mermaid diagrams, embedded images, and automatic theme detection.
- GitHub Flavored Markdown - Full support for tables, task lists, strikethrough, and more
- Mermaid Diagrams - Create flowcharts, sequence diagrams, state diagrams, and other visualizations directly in markdown
- Embedded Images - Automatically converts relative image paths to data URIs for offline viewing
- Theme Detection - HTML output conforms to your system's light or dark theme setting
- Typographic Enhancements - Smart quotes, dashes, and other typographic improvements
- Bare HTML Option - Generate unstyled HTML when needed
- Flexible Output - Write to a temporary file or specify a custom output location
By default, mdview writes the generated HTML to a temporary directory.
It tries these in order:
- A path defined in the
MDVIEW_DIRenvironment variable - Your operating system's temporary directory
If you are on Linux and set the TMPDIR environment variable, that is
what the OS will report as the temp directory. If you set it to a
directory under your home directory, then browsers installed via Snap
(like Firefox on Ubuntu) will be able to read the generated file.
Applications installed via Snap are unable to read from /tmp.
Usage:
mdview [options] <filename>
Formats markdown and launches it in a browser.
If the environment variable MDVIEW_DIR is set, the temporary file will be written there.
-b Bare HTML with no style applied.
-bare
Bare HTML with no style applied.
-h Prints mdview help message.
-help
Prints mdview help message.
-o string
Output filename. (Optional)
-v Prints mdview version.
-version
Prints mdview version.
If you do not supply an output file, mdview will write a file to your operating system's default temp directory or to the value of MDVIEW_DIR.
The generated HTML will conform to your system's light or dark theme setting, as long as your browser supports that feature.
Thanks to sindresorhus for the GitHub style css.
Markdown View is available in the AUR
If you have an AUR helper like yay, installing is as easy as:
yay -S mdview
If you're running Debian or a derivative like Ubuntu or Pop!_OS, you can use deb-get to install mdview.
deb-get install mdviewIf you don't want to use deb-get, you can download the package and
manually install it from the
Releases page.
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/mapitman/mdview/releases/latest \
| grep "browser_download_url.*amd64.deb" \
| cut -d '"' -f 4 \
| xargs curl -L -o mdview_lastest_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg --install mdview_lastest_amd64.debTo remove the package:
sudo dpkg --remove mdviewUpdate: The snap package has been fixed and the latest version is now available as a snap. 🥳
On Linux, you can install mdview from the snap store. This option is only viable if the files you want to view are in your home directory. If you need to view files in other locations, try an alternate installation method.
Note: A side effect of the sandboxing of Snap packages is that every time
mdview is executed, Snap will prompt to allow writing
the temporary file. If that is not acceptable, please choose an
alternate installation method.
sudo snap install mdviewDon't have snapd?
Get set up for snaps.
Grab the correct binary for your operating system here.
If you have Golang installed...
go get github.com/mapitman/mdviewDon't have Golang? Get it now.
graph TD
A["📄 Markdown File"] -->|Read| B["Process Images"]
B -->|Convert<br/>Relative Paths<br/>to Data URIs| C["Image Processing"]
C --> D["Parse Markdown"]
D -->|GFM + Mermaid<br/>+ Typography| E["Goldmark Parser"]
E -->|Generate| F["HTML AST"]
F -->|Extract Title| G["Extract H1"]
F -->|Render| H["HTML Content"]
H -->|Embed<br/>Scripts| I["Add Mermaid.js"]
I -->|Apply Styles| J["Apply CSS Theme"]
J -->|Generate| K["HTML File"]
K -->|Launch| L["🌐 Browser"]