Markless

Markless is a terminal markdown viewer and editor with image support. It is focused on fast navigation, clear rendering, and sensible defaults for long documents.

Screenshots

Features

• Markdown rendering with headings, lists, tables, block quotes, code blocks, footnotes, task lists, and description lists
• Syntax-highlighted code blocks with lazy highlighting for performance
• Inline images (Kitty, Sixel, iTerm2, and half-block fallback) with auto-detection
• Mermaid diagram rendering (SVG rasterized inline, click to open full SVG)
• LaTeX math rendering — inline $...$ as Unicode, display $$...$$ and ```math ``` as images via Typst
• CSV files and ```csv ``` code blocks rendered as formatted tables
• Binary file viewing with hex dump display
• Built-in editor mode with save, undo-friendly exit, and conflict detection
• External editor support (--editor vim, --editor hx, etc.)
• Directory browse mode with file preview
• Table of contents sidebar with keyboard and mouse support
• Search with incremental matching, match count, and highlight
• Anchor and footnote navigation within documents
• File watching for live reload
• Link hover and click (including image placeholders and rendered diagrams)
• Line selection with mouse drag and copy (pbcopy on macOS, OSC 52 fallback)
• Opens image files directly (png, jpg, gif, webp, svg, avif, and more)
• Auto theme detection via OSC 11 terminal query
• Fast scrolling with stable layout and reflow on resize

Installation

Development (from source)

cargo install --path .

Production (from crates.io)

cargo install markless

Usage

markless README.md          # View a file
markless .                  # Browse current directory
markless                    # Browse current directory (default)
markless src/               # Browse a directory

When given a directory, markless opens in browse mode: the sidebar shows the file listing and the first markdown file (or first file) is previewed automatically. Navigate with arrow keys, press Enter to open, and Backspace to go to the parent directory.

Command Line Options

• --watch Auto-reload on file changes
• --no-mouse-select Disable markless mouse selection capture
• --mouse-select Re-enable markless mouse selection capture (overrides saved --no-mouse-select)
• --no-toc Hide the table of contents sidebar
• --toc Start with TOC visible
• --no-images Disable inline image rendering (show placeholders only)
• --image-mode <kitty|sixel|iterm2|halfblock> Force a specific image rendering protocol
• --force-half-cell Force half-cell image rendering (shortcut for --image-mode halfblock)
• --wrap-width <COLS> Maximum content width for word-wrapping
• --theme <auto|light|dark> Force highlight theme background (auto queries the terminal via OSC 11)
• --no-inline-math Render inline math as images instead of Unicode text
• --inline-math Re-enable inline Unicode math (overrides saved --no-inline-math)
• --perf Enable startup performance logging
• --render-debug-log <PATH> Write render/image debug events to a file
• --editor <cmd> Use an external editor instead of the built-in one (e.g. --editor vim, --editor "emacsclient -t")
• --no-editor Disable the external editor (use the built-in editor)
• --save Save current flags as defaults in the global config
• --clear Clear saved defaults in the global config

Config files:

• Global (macOS): ~/Library/Application Support/markless/config
• Local override: .marklessrc in the current directory

Key Bindings

Navigation

• j / k or arrows: scroll
• Space / PageDown: page down
• b / PageUp: page up
• Ctrl-d / Ctrl-u: half page
• g / G: top / bottom

Search

• /: start search
• Enter: next match
• Esc: clear search

TOC

• t: toggle TOC
• T: toggle + focus TOC
• Tab: switch focus
• j / k, arrows, Enter / Space: navigate + jump
• h / Left: collapse (parent directory in browse mode)
• l / Right: expand (enter directory in browse mode)

Browse

• B: enter directory browse mode
• F: return to file-only mode (heading TOC)
• Backspace: navigate to parent directory (in TOC)

Editor

• e: enter edit mode
• Ctrl-e: toggle edit mode (enter or exit)
• Esc: return to view mode
• Ctrl-s: save file
• Arrows, Home/End: navigate
• Ctrl+Left / Ctrl+Right: word movement
• Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End: buffer start / end
• PageUp/PageDown: scroll editor

Other

• w: toggle watch
• r / R: reload file
• o: open visible links (1-9)
• ? / F1: toggle help
• q / Ctrl-c / Ctrl-q: quit

Mouse

• Scroll wheel: scroll
• Click links or images: open
• Hover link/image: show URL
• Click + drag: select lines and copy

License

MIT