mdsee

A minimal macOS CLI tool that opens a native window to view markdown files with automatic refresh on file changes.

Installation

Via Homebrew (recommended)

brew install buckleypaul/mdsee/mdsee

From source

git clone https://github.com/buckleypaul/mdsee.git
cd mdsee
swift build -c release
cp .build/release/mdsee /usr/local/bin/

Usage

mdsee <file.md>
mdsee --theme <theme-name> <file.md>

Simply run mdsee with a markdown file path. A native window will open displaying the rendered markdown.

Features:

• GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) support
• Syntax highlighting for code blocks
• Automatic live reload when the file changes
• Dark mode support (adapts to macOS appearance)
• Tables, task lists, blockquotes, and more
• Print and save as PDF (⌘P)
• Find in page (⌘F)
• Text selection and copy (⌘C)
• Multiple built-in themes

Examples

# View a README
mdsee README.md

# View any markdown file
mdsee ~/Documents/notes.md

# Use a specific theme
mdsee --theme academic paper.md
mdsee --theme solarized notes.md

Themes

mdsee comes with several built-in themes:

• default - GitHub-style theme with light/dark mode
• academic - Palatino serif fonts for scholarly documents
• solarized - Solarized light/dark color scheme
• catppuccin - Catppuccin color palette (frappe, latte, macchiato, mocha variants)
• monokai - Popular dark theme

Use the --theme flag to select a theme:

mdsee --theme academic document.md

Printing and Exporting

Press ⌘P to open the macOS print dialog. From there you can:

• Print to a physical printer
• Save as PDF using the "Save as PDF" button in the print dialog
• Adjust page layout and margins

This makes it easy to export your markdown documents to PDF format with full formatting preserved.

Error Handling

• No argument provided: Prints usage and exits with code 1
• File doesn't exist: Prints error to stderr and exits with code 1
• File is not readable: Prints error to stderr and exits with code 1

Requirements

• macOS 12.0 or later

License

MIT