mdown — a small, fast Markdown viewer and editor

Markdown, opened properly.

mdown notes.md opens the file in its own window, nicely rendered. Press Ctrl/⌘+E to edit it next to a live preview, and print it to PDF when you're done. It uses the web view your OS already has, so there's no bundled browser.

mdown in edit mode: Markdown source on the left, the rendered page on the right with an equation, a flowchart and a bar chart.

01install

cargo

cargo install mdown

cargo-binstall

cargo binstall mdown

file manager

mdown install

Or grab a prebuilt archive from GitHub Releases. mdown install adds “Open with mdown” to the right-click menu and can make it the default for .md files; mdown uninstall takes it all out again.

02what it renders

GitHub-flavoured MarkdownTables, task lists, footnotes, heading anchors, alerts like [!NOTE], and sanitised inline HTML.

Math $inline$ and $$display$$ equations with KaTeX.

Diagrams and chartsMermaid fences, and chart fences that take a Chart.js config as JSON.

3D models.glb, .gltf and .stl files embedded like images, with drag to orbit and scroll to zoom.

CodeSyntax highlighting for 28 languages, loaded only when a document uses them.

Always currentThe view reloads when the file changes on disk, and asks first if you have unsaved edits.

A document with math, a diagram and a chart in mdown's light theme.

03usage

mdown notes.md                # open a file
mdown a.md b.md c.md          # one window each
mdown theme dark              # system, light or dark
mdown install --all --yes     # right-click entry + default app

# in the window
Ctrl/⌘+E        edit with live preview
Ctrl/⌘+F        find in page
Ctrl/⌘+Shift+O  contents panel
Ctrl/⌘+P        print or save as PDF

04spec

platform	Windows 10 / 11 (WebView2), macOS 11+ (WKWebView)
size	~8 MB, no bundled browser
stack	Rust + tao / wry, CodeMirror editor
install	`cargo install mdown` or a prebuilt archive
settings	Theme, text size and page width, shared by every window
license	MIT
cost	Free