MDV - a clean Markdown viewer for Mac, from the Itsycal dev
I think a lot of you know Mowglii and the app Itsycal, it's been mentioned here multiple times, and it's just a little, perfect menu bar calendar. I recently visited his website and discovered MDV, a free Markdown viewer for Mac. From the website: Features Github-flavored Markdown rendering A File Watcher which updates as you edit A Table of Contents sidebar YAML and TOML front matter blocks Mermaid diagrams Document search Print to PDF or paper A bundled Quick Look preview extension A bundled command line tool Command Line Tool MDV comes with a command line tool called mdv that opens Markdown files from the terminal. Since quite a few Markdown viewers are popping up lately, I wanted to bring attention to this one, from a dev we trust. Official website: https://www.mowglii.com/mdv/ I'm not affiliated with the dev, I haven't been paid to promote the app, and I haven't seen this mentioned here before.
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looks awesome. is it electron based?
Sorry, I'm not the dev, but the app is pretty light (~4MB) so I don't think it's Electron. I asked Claude to check, and it confirmed it's native Swift/Objective-C: "It uses a WKWebView just to render the markdown (syntax highlighting, Mermaid diagrams), not a bundled Chromium/Electron runtime." Could be missing something, so please wait for a second opinion.
It’s not. You can right click the .app, choose Show Contents, and look around. It uses Sparkle for updates and cmark-gfm 0.29.0 for parsing and HTML generation.
It's got quicklook too? I've seen a lot of markdown viewers but this is the first one I've seen that has quicklook... that's so awesome.
Yes! It works as a standalone app, a QuickLook plugin, or via the command line. pretty versatile little tool. Remember to enable the QuickLook extension in System Settings (under Extensions, or Login Items & Extensions depending on your macOS version).
Will try it. Thank you!
Does it/can it hook into quicklook? I have one like that but its a tad buggy and would make a quick squiz of MD files a tonne easier
just tested it and it does work with quicklook
Neat! Thankyou!
Nice find! The Quick Look extension is what caught my attention. Being able to preview Markdown files directly from Finder is much more convenient than opening a full editor every time.
I’ve been using https://markdownpreview.app for a while and it’s so similar that I actually thought they were the same app. This one is open source, though…
great work!
This is great. I work with MD files a lot and i’m sure with the rise of AI assisted coding, more people do as well.
Cool! I've been an early Itsycal user for over 8 years, definitely trying this.
nice find. live file watching and quick look support is a good combo
Ahh, the quicklook feature has got me! I need this!
I tried a Markdown editor before. It is a paid app. Fair. But the problem is that it wont accept input when I paste ChatGPT output there. Hopefuly this solves. Because for my case its more important to render AI output as is rather than I fight to get styling right.
Yeah, it comes with its own Quick Look extension. You just have to launch MDV once, then switch the extension on in System Settings. On current macOS it's under General, in the Login Items and Extensions section; older versions had it under System Settings then Extensions, Quick Look. After that, spacebar on a .md file in Finder gives you the rendered preview. If you've already got a buggy one installed, turn that other extension off in the same list before you enable this. When two extensions both claim .md, macOS gets inconsistent about which one actually runs, and that's usually where the flaky behaviour comes from. Keep one enabled at a time and it tends to settle down.
Love this app, hate the icon! It looks like 2010 windows app icons xD
This is just a viewer? I can't find any way to edit a markdown file.
the Quick Look extension plus cli is the part i'd test first. a lot of markdown viewers are fine when opened directly, but the daily friction is previewing README/changelog notes from Finder or terminal without switching context. i'd also try a folder with Mermaid + front matter + big tables before trusting it as the default viewer.