ViewMD

A lightweight GTK 3 markdown viewer for desktop Linux. It is ideal as your default app for opening .md files. Uses the excellent library md4c for markdown parsing. This project is sort of a companion app/fork of my other markdown project TrayMD.

Features

• Native GTK viewer - No webviews
• Read-only rendering - Focused on viewing markdown files
• Minimal UI - Clean toolbar with open and settings buttons
• Lightweight - Pure C, no web technologies, fast startup
• Hyperlink support - Left click opens links and internal anchors
• Document search - Ctrl+F with next/previous match navigation

Supported Markdown

Syntax	Description
# Header 1	Large bold header
## Header 2	Medium bold header
### Header 3	Small bold header
**bold**	Bold text
*italic*	Italic text
`code`	Inline code
...	Code block
- item	List item
> quote	Block quote
[text](url)	Link
~~strike~~	Strikethrough
| table | row |	Markdown tables
---	Horizontal rule

Code blocks currently support a beta version of keyword highlighting for fenced languages c, java, and python.

Installation

Arch Linux (AUR)

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/viewmd

Debian/Ubuntu (.deb)

Install a built .deb package with:

sudo apt install ./viewmd_*.deb

Fedora/RHEL (.rpm)

Install a built .rpm package with:

sudo dnf install ./viewmd-*.rpm

Usage

Run viewmd to start the application.

• Open button: Open a markdown document
• Reload button: Reload the currently open document from disk
• Settings button: Adjust theme, fonts, and markdown accent colors

Find in Document

• Press Ctrl+F to open search.
• Type to highlight matches as you search.
• Press Enter for next match and Shift+Enter for previous match.
• Press Esc to close search.

Set as Default .md Viewer

After installing, associate markdown MIME types with viewmd.desktop:

xdg-mime default viewmd.desktop text/markdown
xdg-mime default viewmd.desktop text/x-markdown

Verify the current default:

xdg-mime query default text/markdown

Test by opening a markdown file through your desktop association:

xdg-open README.md

Building From Source

make
sudo make install

This installs:

• Binary to /usr/local/bin/viewmd
• Desktop file to /usr/local/share/applications/viewmd.desktop

Uninstallation

sudo make uninstall

Dependencies

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S gtk3

Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev

Fedora

sudo dnf install gtk3-devel

Packaging Templates

• Arch: packaging/arch/PKGBUILD
• Debian: packaging/deb/control.in
• RPM: packaging/rpm/viewmd.spec.in

License

MIT License

Other Useful Projects

• TrayMD is an app for taking notes in markdown with live editing TrayMD
• Preditor is an image viewer with a similar philosophy to viewmd preditor
• Try my AI panel plugin for XFCE XFCE Ask
• For a feature complete AI application try out ChatGTK
• A lightweight speech to text implementation Auriscribe
• A lightweight local movie database and browser ReelVault