You can do this on KDE. Just set Okular as the default app for markdown files, If you want editing too LibreOffice instead (and on any OS and DE). The only problem is that it is a viewer not an editor. There are editors with preview which solve that. Even editors without preview will highlight, and, there is already software that provides exactly what the author wants (notepad, which the article mentions) or visual editing of markdown (Libre Office)
I am not sure its that important that its a default. Markdown is primarily and editable format that is easily converted to a readable one - its the inverse of PDF which is a readable format that is hard to edit.
While I do agree with the author's overall point, I think that he inadvertently stumbles on the probable reason here:
> If I want to see the original Markdown syntax, I should be able to switch to that view just as easily.
This doesn't really map well to existing document opening conventions, so the author's hypothetical built-in Markdown viewer/editor doesn't really fit into any existing system app. For example, if Apple modified TextEdit.app to open Markdown files in the same way it handles RTF documents, it would cover the formatted display case, but not editing the source. They would have to add some third mode (or build an entirely separate app) to handle switching between Markdown source and formatted views, deal with displaying malformed syntax, etc. Not to mention handling the various differences between Markdown flavors.
It can just be a toggle button, just like 'show formatting' in lots of rich text editors. And remember the state of the last interacted window when opening a new file.
Then some sane styling defaults, which you can change globally, on a per folder and on a per document basis. Perhaps the option to include some stationary backgrounds for PDF rendering, and I think you have touched upon 95% of the document editing needs.
Obsidian has a quick shortcut to switch between view mode and edit mode, end their edit mode is actually partially formatted (# headers are displayed in a bigger font)
> Not to mention handling the various differences between Markdown flavors
Funnily enough, I was looking for Python markdown to HTML rendering library, and the author of one of the biggest two closed a bug on me reporting a minor incompatibility saying "that is GitHub format, we don't support it, we only support CommonMark, GitHub format is non-standard and broken".
I felt the same but if you put it into Claude code Opus 5.5 can build you a program that will open faster than anything you’ve ever used before if you ask for it. I asked for it and it’s instantaneous. Faster than literally any other macOS app.
It opens and displays a markdown file faster than bitwarden’s chrome extension displays its fill UI.
The future is almost here. Formats and so on are on the threshold of irrelevance in the next few years for this kind of consumer use. It’s hard to even tell if the time it takes us to summarize a text will be the time a future agent takes to write a specialized program that extracts what you need from the file. “Native” support will soon be irrelevant.
I love any appreciation of markdown, but I think this particular essay attacks the very basis of my sphinxian soul in two ways:
1. There’s no acknowledgement of the rich ecosystem of markdown dialects, which add all sorts of incredible features as simple as inline citations and as complex as full roles and directives. They all need highlighting.
2. There’s author claims to like markdown, but then it becomes clear that they don’t like markdown itself, they just like it being behind a rendered WYSIWYG editor. Which… :( headers should look like headers and tables should look like tables, yes, but not at the cost of removing any of the syntax characters! If you do, you’re sacrificing the whole point of the format: ease of modification.
Clearly their heart is in the right place, though. I absolutely loathe sites that don’t support markdown; there is *zero* reason not to do something _this_ important! ~~I dare say it would be something that the three mods and their uninvolved monarch should go to bed every night feeling ashamed of…~~
This is probably getting into old man yells at cloud territory, but it's markdown... Open it in a text editor. That is the most of point of having markdown, nice looking plain text. typeset text is the side effect, if the point were typeset text I would hope that a better format than markdown was used.
I was searching for a simple markdown viewer for Ubuntu.
Shockingly, I could only find about 3, and all sucked in their own special way.
I have the simplest of requirements: just format it and show it like a PDF. Either the app doesn't remember its position and always restarts in an awkward landscape format, or it insists in showing a "file tree" side bar, no simple file viewer.
You can do this on KDE. Just set Okular as the default app for markdown files, If you want editing too LibreOffice instead (and on any OS and DE). The only problem is that it is a viewer not an editor. There are editors with preview which solve that. Even editors without preview will highlight, and, there is already software that provides exactly what the author wants (notepad, which the article mentions) or visual editing of markdown (Libre Office)
I am not sure its that important that its a default. Markdown is primarily and editable format that is easily converted to a readable one - its the inverse of PDF which is a readable format that is hard to edit.
While I do agree with the author's overall point, I think that he inadvertently stumbles on the probable reason here:
> If I want to see the original Markdown syntax, I should be able to switch to that view just as easily.
This doesn't really map well to existing document opening conventions, so the author's hypothetical built-in Markdown viewer/editor doesn't really fit into any existing system app. For example, if Apple modified TextEdit.app to open Markdown files in the same way it handles RTF documents, it would cover the formatted display case, but not editing the source. They would have to add some third mode (or build an entirely separate app) to handle switching between Markdown source and formatted views, deal with displaying malformed syntax, etc. Not to mention handling the various differences between Markdown flavors.
It can just be a toggle button, just like 'show formatting' in lots of rich text editors. And remember the state of the last interacted window when opening a new file.
Then some sane styling defaults, which you can change globally, on a per folder and on a per document basis. Perhaps the option to include some stationary backgrounds for PDF rendering, and I think you have touched upon 95% of the document editing needs.
Obsidian has a quick shortcut to switch between view mode and edit mode, end their edit mode is actually partially formatted (# headers are displayed in a bigger font)
> Not to mention handling the various differences between Markdown flavors
Funnily enough, I was looking for Python markdown to HTML rendering library, and the author of one of the biggest two closed a bug on me reporting a minor incompatibility saying "that is GitHub format, we don't support it, we only support CommonMark, GitHub format is non-standard and broken".
This essay could have been a prompt. I have a markdown viewer. Comes out of the same codebase as my json viewer https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-04-30/Personal_Sof...
I felt the same but if you put it into Claude code Opus 5.5 can build you a program that will open faster than anything you’ve ever used before if you ask for it. I asked for it and it’s instantaneous. Faster than literally any other macOS app.
It opens and displays a markdown file faster than bitwarden’s chrome extension displays its fill UI.
The future is almost here. Formats and so on are on the threshold of irrelevance in the next few years for this kind of consumer use. It’s hard to even tell if the time it takes us to summarize a text will be the time a future agent takes to write a specialized program that extracts what you need from the file. “Native” support will soon be irrelevant.
Even my solution is yesterday’s solution.
I love any appreciation of markdown, but I think this particular essay attacks the very basis of my sphinxian soul in two ways:
1. There’s no acknowledgement of the rich ecosystem of markdown dialects, which add all sorts of incredible features as simple as inline citations and as complex as full roles and directives. They all need highlighting.
2. There’s author claims to like markdown, but then it becomes clear that they don’t like markdown itself, they just like it being behind a rendered WYSIWYG editor. Which… :( headers should look like headers and tables should look like tables, yes, but not at the cost of removing any of the syntax characters! If you do, you’re sacrificing the whole point of the format: ease of modification.
Clearly their heart is in the right place, though. I absolutely loathe sites that don’t support markdown; there is *zero* reason not to do something _this_ important! ~~I dare say it would be something that the three mods and their uninvolved monarch should go to bed every night feeling ashamed of…~~
This is probably getting into old man yells at cloud territory, but it's markdown... Open it in a text editor. That is the most of point of having markdown, nice looking plain text. typeset text is the side effect, if the point were typeset text I would hope that a better format than markdown was used.
I was searching for a simple markdown viewer for Ubuntu.
Shockingly, I could only find about 3, and all sucked in their own special way.
I have the simplest of requirements: just format it and show it like a PDF. Either the app doesn't remember its position and always restarts in an awkward landscape format, or it insists in showing a "file tree" side bar, no simple file viewer.