mdview

Markdown View

Formats markdown and launches it in a browser.

Usage

By default, mdview tries to use your operating system's temporary directory to write HTML files to. If that doesn't work for you, you can set an environment variable that it will use instead. For example, on Ubuntu Linux, Firefox is packaged as a Snap and is unable to read from /tmp. I get around this by setting MDVIEW_DIR like so:

export MDVIEW_DIR=$HOME/mdview-temp

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

Thanks to sindresorhus for the GitHub style css.

Installation

Arch Linux (and derivatives)

Markdown View is now available in the AUR If you have an AUR helper like yay, installing is as easy as:

yay -S mdview

Debian Package

If you're running Debian or a derivative like Ubuntu or Pop!_OS, you can use deb-get to install mdview.

deb-get install mdview

If 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.deb

To remove the package:

sudo dpkg --remove mdview

Snap Package

Update: 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 mdview

Don't have snapd?
Get set up for snaps.

Manual Download and Install

Grab the correct binary for your operating system here.

Compile Yourself

If you have Golang installed...

go get github.com/mapitman/mdview

Don't have Golang? Get it now.