A tool to generate Markdown file QuickLook previews for macOS Catalina and up

Latest Release: 1.1.4

 New Version

 

How to Use PreviewMarkdown

Install the app and run it. This will register the availability of the app’s QuickLook extensions, Previewer and Thumbnailer. You can now quit the app: just click OK:

Using QuickLook in Finder — select a Markdown file (.md, .mdown or .markdown, for example) and press space — will pop up a rendered image of file:

You can disable or re-enable Previewer and Thumbnailer in System Preferences > Extensions:

For some background information on how Catalina delivers QuickLook previews, please see this blog post.

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Feedback and Bug Reports

From version 1.1.1, you can use the in-app UI to submit feedback. Just click in the Send Feedback button in the main window, or select Report a Bug… from the Help menu:

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Troubleshooting

If it appears that either Previewer or Thumbnailer are not working after you have run the host app, please log out of your Mac and then log back in. A future release will offer to do this for you.

Some applications which can edit Markdown files may register a non-standard, proprietary Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) for Markdown files. PreviewMarkdown may not be aware of these UTIs and therefore may not be able to preview and thumbnail these files on your system. If you encounter this issue — typically, previews of markdown files will show the raw formatting text — please run utitool to determine a Markdown file’s UTI and send this UTI to me using PreviewMarkdown’s feedback system. I can then include the UTI in a future release. Thank you!

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Enjoyed Using PreviewMarkdown?

If you have found PreviewMarkdown to be useful, please consider writing a positive review on the Mac App Store, or simply give it a rating.

Thank you!

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Acknowledgements

In addition to its own code, PreviewMarkdown makes use of code from the following sources:

• SwiftyMarkdown — Markdown-to-NSAttributedString conversion.

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Release Notes

• 1.1.4 16 January 2021
  • Add UTI net.ia.markdown.
• 1.1.3 13 January 2021
  • Add UTI writer.pro.markdown.
• 1.1.2 18 November 2020
  • Apple Silicon support.
• 1.1.1 1 October 2020
  • Add report bugs/send feedback mechanism.
  • Add further usage advice to the main window.
  • Handle markdown formatting not yet rendered by SwiftyMarkdown: three-tick code blocks; HTML symbols; space-inset lists.
• 1.1.0 25 September 2020
  • Add macOS Big Sur support.
  • Better macOS dark/light mode support.
  • Migrate engine to SwiftyMarkdown 1.2.3.
• 1.0.5 9 April 2020
  • Mac App Store version.
• 1.0.4 Not Released
• 1.0.3 10 December 2019
  • Add the version number to the app info dialog.
• 1.0.2 4 December 2019
  • Fix random crash (string index out of range in SwiftyMarkdown).
• 1.0.1 20 November 2019
  • Correct thumbnail styling.
• 1.0.0 8 November 2019
  • Initial public release.

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Source Code

You can view PreviewMarkdown’s source code at GitHub.

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Related Software

• ASCII
• MNU
• imageprep
• pdfmaker
• utitool

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