md-viewer

A fast, lightweight markdown viewer for Linux built with Rust and egui. Designed for distraction-free reading with excellent typography and syntax highlighting.

Features

Rendering

• GitHub Flavored Markdown - Full GFM support including tables, task lists, and footnotes
• Syntax Highlighting - 200+ languages via syntect with beautiful color schemes
• Mermaid Diagrams - Flowcharts, sequence diagrams, and more rendered natively via merman (click to enlarge)
• HTML Tables - Rendered as formatted grids with proper cell padding
• Images & SVG - Embedded and remote image support (PNG, JPEG, GIF, SVG, HTTP URLs)
• Unicode Support - System font fallbacks (Noto, DejaVu) for emojis, CJK, and non-Latin scripts
• 60 FPS Rendering - Smooth scrolling with viewport-based lazy rendering
• Typography - 1.5x line height for optimal readability (WCAG 2.1 compliant)

Navigation

• Tab System - Open multiple documents with tab bar (Ctrl+Click links to open in new tab)
• File Explorer - Hierarchical sidebar with lazy-loading directories and sorting options
• Outline Sidebar - Click-to-navigate table of contents from document headers
• Navigation Buttons - Back/forward buttons in title bar for quick history navigation
• Per-Tab History - Independent back/forward navigation within each tab (Alt+Left/Right)
• Internal Links - Navigate between markdown files with relative links

View

• Dark & Light Themes - Toggle with Ctrl+D
• Zoom - 50% to 300% zoom (Ctrl++/-/0 or Ctrl+Scroll)
• Live Reload - Auto-refresh on file changes (enabled by default)

Usability

• Drag and Drop - Drop markdown files onto the window to open
• Native Dialogs - System file picker integration
• Session Persistence - Remembers open tabs, theme, zoom, and sidebar state
• Cross-Platform - Works on X11 and Wayland

Screenshots

Dark Mode

File explorer, mermaid diagrams, and document outline

Light Mode

Clean light theme with the same powerful features

Syntax Highlighting

200+ languages with semantic coloring for keywords, types, and comments

Tables

Markdown tables and HTML tables rendered as formatted grids

Keyboard Shortcuts

Tab Management

Navigation

View

File Operations

Installation

Arch Linux (AUR)

# Using yay
yay -S md-viewer-git

# Using paru
paru -S md-viewer-git

Snap Store

sudo snap install md-viewer

Cargo (crates.io)

cargo install md-viewer

From Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/aydiler/md-viewer
cd md-viewer

# Build release binary
cargo build --release

# Install to ~/.local/bin (optional)
make install

System Dependencies (Arch Linux)

sudo pacman -S --needed \
    base-devel clang pkg-config \
    libxcb libxkbcommon openssl \
    gtk3 fontconfig dbus zenity \
    xdg-desktop-portal xdg-desktop-portal-gtk

Usage

# Open a file (live reload is enabled by default)
md-viewer README.md

# Disable live reload
md-viewer README.md --no-watch

Technical Details

• Binary size: ~8.7 MB (includes syntax highlighting, image support, X11+Wayland)
• Startup time: < 200ms
• Rendering: 60 FPS with viewport-based clipping
• Memory: Uses mimalloc for improved allocation performance
• Platform: Linux (X11 and Wayland via glow backend)

Built With

• eframe/egui - Immediate mode GUI framework
• egui_commonmark - Markdown rendering (vendored fork with typography improvements)
• merman - Mermaid diagram rendering
• syntect - Syntax highlighting
• notify - File watching
• rfd - Native file dialogs

License

MIT