Simple Markdown viewer for Ubuntu (standalone program, not something that requires usage of an internet browser)

Question

I am looking for a Markdown viewer. It should:

• run locally on Ubuntu - be a normal program, not a browser addon, webapp or anything else that requires usage of an internet browser*

Preferable:

• simple and lightweight
• open source

Viewer as in "view formatted content". It is fine if viewer is also an editor.

See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9331281/how-can-i-test-what-my-readme-md-file-will-look-like-before-committing-to-github for wider version of this question.

*I give an exception to browsers running in terminal in text mode

Answer 1

Though not strictly being a viewer, I can recommend ReText here – which I'm using myself on Ubuntu, and am pretty satisfied.

• runs locally on Linux: Yes (also on Windows and Mac)
• normal program, not a browser addon: Yes. Written in Python, and easy to deal with.
• simple and lightweight: Yes. On its own, it comes with the basics – and you can add more (like support for specific Markdown dialects as Markdown Extra or MathJax if you need.
• open source: Yes (using GPLv2)

^{ReText with Live Preview (source: ReText; click image for larger variant)}

As I said to start with, it's not strictly a viewer – but an editor including a viewer and a "Live Preview". You can call it from the command line, passing the file as parameter. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to start it directly in the viewer mode – but a work-around to at least have the "Live Preview" triggered:

• start it once with a file open
• press Ctrl-L (or use the menu: Edit › Live Preview) to switch on the "Live Preview" mode
• using the menu, go to Edit › Preferences, and check "Restore live preview state" under "Behavior"

Now, when opened the next time, the "Live Preview" is switched on automatically. Alternatively, you can open the "real preview" (without the editor pane) by either clicking the "Preview" button, or using the keyboard-shortcut Ctrl-E.

For more details, also see my answers here and here.

Answer 2

Grip

I have been using this for a year and it is my goto Markdown render-er. Here are its features:

• Markdown? Github Flavored
• Linux? Yes
• Normal? Yes
• It is a command line tool
• Offline? No

• There's also a work-in-progress branch to provide offline rendering

• Simple/Lightweight? Yes
• It is a command line tool
• Open source? Yes

Bonus

• Export to PDF/HTML
• Host locally as a webpage/wiki
• GitHub Auth to increase API limit (docs)

---

Here is an example of the HTML output.

Answer 3

Okular

Okular has a Markdown backend, which allows it to display Markdown-formated text. On Debian-based systems (like Ubuntu) you might have to install the okular-extra-backends package to use it.

sudo apt install okular okular-extra-backends

The nice thing about Okular is that it is just a plain viewer. You can use your text editor of choice, and as soon as you save the Markdown document, Okular reloads the document.

Answer 4

pandoc -s filename.md | lynx -stdin

This doesn't meet the requirement of "... or anything else that requires usage of browser", but the browser runs in a terminal in text mode.

https://pandoc.org/

Answer 5

Following is copy of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9331281/how-can-i-test-what-my-readme-md-file-will-look-like-before-committing-to-github#40696607 by Brian Burns

Atom works nicely out of the box - just open the Markdown file and hit Ctrl+Shift+M to toggle the Markdown preview panel next to it. It handles HTML and images also.

Though note that performance of Atom is ridiculously poor and that development of that software appears to be stopping - see https://github.com/atom/atom/graphs/contributors (probably as it makes no sense to Microsoft to maintain two text editors in the same niche)

As of March 2023 Atom is officially dead.

Answer 6

What I generally do is run the markdown perl script and save the resulting html in a temporary file that can be browsed using Firefox. For example:

Markdown.pl index.md > index.html

Answer 7

I find Retext fine as is answered but I do have digged out a few MD editors for linux that are more or less better than the solution suggested.

If more they have additional features, and less so they are fast.

• Haroopad This is more feature-filled than Remarkable, and looks like a dev tool.(The dev version of this app is also coming soon)

• Springseed If you needed a note taker This one does the job Beautifully.

Answer 8

There is also an amazing one here on GitHub appropriately named Glow... It's absolutely lightweight. You don't even need to leave the terminal. Works on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Here's a simple markdown text I created quickly to view with Glow. It only consists of an ordinary(non-marked-down) line of text, an H1 header, a horizontal rule, a block quote line, and a Python snippet:

I am not wrong!!!!!!!

# Can YOU handle it ????????

---

> Oh my goshhhhh!!!!!!

```python
print("Hello World")
```|

And here's a screenshot of the result:

Answer 9

Remarkable

Features:

• Live preview
• It's free.
• Extremely lightweight
• Export to HTML, PDF
  
  Download: https://remarkableapp.github.io/

Answer 10

In Ubuntu 20.04, install from the bundled apt repos:

sudo apt install ghostwriter

Pros:

• bundled in official Ubuntu repos
• binary executable rather than a script

Cons:

• on life support - not even bug fixing PRs are accepted and issue tracker is disabled.

Answer 11

Brackets.io

Brackets is an open-source free-of-cost text editor sponsored by Adobe. See Wikipedia.

Live preview of HTML+CSS is built-in.

Markdown Preview extension

➠ For live preview of Markdown, use the Markdown Preview extension by gruehle.

Answer 12

mdless

I found this one quite handy. It is a ruby gem, that allows CLI viewing of Markdown files.

if you are using Ubuntu:

sudo apt install ruby
sudo gem install mdless

https://brettterpstra.com/2015/08/21/mdless-better-markdown-in-terminal/

Answer 13

1. Simple Note:

   is a note taking and its accepting MarkDown

https://simplenote.com

2. Boostnote:

Another alternative and its what i am using.

https://boostnote.io/

Both are Totally Free..

Answer 14

This question was asked in 2015. Meanwhile Visual Studio Code has become quite popular. It is available also on Linux.

VS Code has good Markdown support built-in, and since 2017 or so it has a Preview-Mode for Markdown (sync'ed split windows). For screenshots, scroll down on the page I've linked to.

Markdown support can also be enriched with many extensions, e.g. "markdownlint".

Answer 15

abricotine

Relevant Pros:

• preview your document directly in the text editor rather than in a side pane (could be a cons but I find it a pro).
• supports inline images
• Write in markdown and export documents in HTML or in any other format supported by Pandoc (PDF, docx, ODT, etc.),
• Preview text elements (such as headers, images, math, embedded videos, todo lists...) while you type,
• Auto save your document on change (optional),
• Display document table of content in an optional side pane,
• Display syntax highlighting for code,
• and many more

Cons

• yet to find (maybe not so light?)

Answer 16

Ahh, It is very strange to me that Obsidian is not listed here. I have been using this tool for more than a year and I am quite happy with it.

I am using it without paying any subscription fees. I use git extension to save my notes to Github and I use termux in android to receive those updates.

However, you can use its premium service which has sync feature enable automatically for you.

Answer 17

ghostwriter

has a nice interface

lookatme

has a good interface

mdp

picky with the terminal size, but quick and effective

formiko

gave me a SEG FAULT

from:

sudo apt search markdown
formiko/jammy,jammy 1.3.0-2 all — reStructuredText and MarkDown editor and live previewer
ghostwriter/jammy 2.1.1-1 amd64 — Distraction-free, themeable Markdown editor
lookatme/jammy,jammy 2.3.0-1 all — interactive command-line presentation tool
mdp/jammy 1.0.15-1 amd64 — command-line based Markdown presentation tool

Answer 18

Apostrophe

Distro	Available	Command
Fedora 39	Yes	dnf install apostrophe
Ubuntu 24.04	Yes	apt install apostrophe
Pop!_OS 24.04	Yes	apt install apostrophe
Debian 12	Yes	apt install apostrophe
Kali Rolling	Yes	apt install apostrophe

Answer 19

(I started this as a comment to "izzy"'s answer but due to lack of formatting options I rewrote as an answer) - Thank you @izzy for mentioning this tool)

ReText works for me as follows:

1. On the commandline enter retext --preview file.md

OR (to make thins easier)

2. I did some changes in the Python sources of the installed package (don't do this without copying the original files - and know what you are doing ;-) )

This is for version 7.0.1-1, running on Linux Mint 19.3 - things have changed a bit in newer versions

• in /usr/bin/retext (Python) search for the line containing

  previewMode = False and change it to previewMode = True

This starts ReText in preview-mode only and you can start viewing with retext file.md

• in /usr/share/retext/ReText/window.py search for "view-refresh" and change the line after which is originally

  lambda: self.currentTab.readTextFromFile())

  to

  lambda: self.currentTab.readTextFromFile(), shct=Qt.Key_F5)

  to refresh using F5-key

Of course this whole "hack" is not "end user friendly", not updateble and you have to do this as "root" - but anyway, for me(!) it works :-)

Answer 20

Markdown Viewer can be installed from Ubuntu Software.

The project site: https://github.com/mapitman/mdview

It is a command line tool that generates a temporary HTML file and open it in the browser.

Answer 21

Microsoft VSCode

At the command line, for instance, just enter "code " and, once opened, just Ctrl+Shift+V.