- Free forever
- No account, no upload
- Markdown and PDF
- 8 themes
Markdown and PDF, read properly
A lightweight Markdown reader, editor and PDF reader for the documents developers actually keep: READMEs, notes, specs, and the PDFs that come with them. Live contents down the side, highlighted code, real math, diagrams from text — and a split editor when you would rather write than read.
Opens instantly in this browser — nothing to install, nothing to
sign up for. Or get the desktop app: same reader, works offline, opens
.md and .pdf on double-click.
What it does
Everything a document needs, and nothing it doesn't
The same features in the browser and on the desktop. No tiers, no locked panels, no upsell — the two builds differ only where a browser tab and a native window genuinely differ.
Split editor, live preview
Write on the left, watch it render on the right as you type. Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+K do what you expect. Read, Split and Edit are one click apart.
Contents that follow you
A sidebar built from the headings, nested as the document nests them, with the section you are reading highlighted as you scroll. A PDF gets one too, from its own bookmarks.
Code, highlighted
193 languages bundled in, so a fence is coloured
whether it says rust or nix. Each one gets
its language tag, a Copy button, and a
Maximize button that opens a wide snippet in a
near-full-window viewer with optional soft wrap.
Math that looks like math
$inline$ and $$display$$ are typeset with
KaTeX, bundled locally. No CDN, no network, no flash of raw LaTeX
before it settles.
Diagrams from text
A mermaid fence becomes a flowchart, a sequence
diagram or a Gantt chart, drawn in the theme you are reading in
rather than pasted in as a foreign image.
PDFs in the same window
Open a .pdf and it gets the same treatment: the same
themes, the same contents sidebar, the same progress rail, find and
page stats. A lightweight PDF reader and a Markdown reader in one
window — one reader, two formats.
Eight themes, five dark
Midnight, and seven more — each one tuned so the code, the tables and the diagrams keep the same contrast the prose has. Ctrl+J cycles them; your pick is remembered.
Export as PDF
Ctrl+P prints the rendered document, chrome stripped and page breaks kept out of the middle of code blocks and tables — so what you send looks like what you read.
Find, with a count
Ctrl+F searches the document and tells you which match of how many you are on, Enter and Shift+Enter walking them. It works inside an open PDF as well.
Watched files and live stats
Change a file in another editor and the reader picks it up on its own, unless you have unsaved edits. Words, characters, reading time and a progress rail sit along the bottom.
Your files never leave your computer
There is no account, no server and no upload — in either build. The web version opens files with your browser's own file picker and renders them in the tab; the highlighter, the math typesetter, the diagram engine and the PDF engine are all served from this domain, not from a CDN. Nothing is measured, nothing is stored anywhere but your own machine, and there is nothing to opt out of.
Which also means you can read the page's source and see that for yourself — there is no minified analytics bundle to squint at, because there is no script on this page at all.
Download
Get it for Windows
Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit. Both builds are the same app — the only question is whether you want it installed or carried around. You do not need either one to use Markdown Eye: the web version is complete.
Installer
- Start menu and desktop shortcuts
-
Opens
.mdand.pdffiles on double-click - Choose where it installs; uninstalls cleanly
- Remembers your theme, window size and last folder
Portable
- One
.exe. Double-click it and it runs - Fine on a USB stick or a locked-down work machine
- Writes nothing to Program Files, adds no shortcuts
-
Will not claim
.mdfiles — nothing is registered
Windows will warn you the first time
These builds are not code-signed — a certificate costs a few hundred dollars a year, and this is free software. So SmartScreen shows “Windows protected your PC” on the first run of a new version. Click More info, then Run anyway. The warning is about the missing signature, not about anything found in the file, and it stops once enough people have run that build.
If you would rather check the download yourself, run this in PowerShell and compare the result against SHA256SUMS.txt, which sits beside the installers:
Get-FileHash .\MarkdownEye-Setup-2.0.0.exe
Prefer not to deal with any of that? Use the web version — it is the same app, and a browser tab needs no signature.
Questions
Before you click download
Is the web version really the whole app?
Yes. Same reader, same split editor, same eight themes, same
highlighting, math, diagrams and PDF support. There is no free
tier and no paid tier, no document limit and no sign-in. The
desktop build exists for the things a browser tab cannot do:
working with no connection at all, and being the program Windows
opens when you double-click a .md file.
Where do my files go?
Nowhere. Your browser hands the file's contents to the page, the page renders it in the tab, and that is the end of it — there is no request that could carry it anywhere, and no server on the other end if there were. Every library the app uses is served from this domain rather than a CDN, so opening a document does not tell a third party you did.
Which browsers can save back to the original file?
Chrome and Edge can: they support the File System Access API, so Ctrl+S writes straight back to the file you opened, in place. Firefox and Safari have no such permission, so there Ctrl+S downloads the edited file instead — your work is never trapped, it just arrives as a new file. The app tells you which one you are in on its keyboard-shortcuts page.
Does the web version work offline?
No, and it says so rather than half-promising it. There is no service worker caching the app behind your back, which also means nothing stale to clear when a new version ships. If you want a reader that works on a plane, that is exactly what the desktop build is for — it carries its own copy of everything.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The reader, the contents panel, find, the themes and the editor all work down to a 320px screen: the contents slide in over the page instead of taking a column, the split view stacks the editor above the preview, and wide tables scroll on their own rather than stretching the page.
Which file types does it open?
.md, .markdown, .mdown,
.mkd, plain .txt, and
.pdf. Images referenced by a local Markdown file
resolve relative to it, the way they do in any other editor.
Installer or portable — which one?
The installer, unless you have a reason not to. It is the one that
registers Markdown Eye as a handler for .md and
.pdf, so double-clicking a file opens it here. Take
the portable build if you cannot install software on the machine,
or if you want it on a USB stick: it is a single
.exe that leaves nothing behind.
Why does Windows say it protected my PC?
Because the build is unsigned, not because anything was found in it. The note above the FAQ explains what the dialog is doing and how to check the file yourself if you would like to.
Can I install the web version like an app?
On Chrome or Edge, yes — use Install in the address
bar. It gets its own window with no browser chrome, appears in your
launcher, and can be set as the handler for
.md and .pdf files. It is still the web
version, so it still needs a connection to start.
Is it open source?
Markdown Eye itself is not published as a repository. Everything
it is built out of is open source and bundled into it: Electron,
and for the reader marked plus DOMPurify,
highlight.js, KaTeX, Mermaid and pdf.js — none of them
swapped for a hosted service, none of them phoning home. The app
is free to use with no account and no telemetry either way.
Guides
Markdown, explained without the jargon
Two plain-English references, free to read and with nothing to sign up for — one for the syntax itself, one for the file it lands in.
Markdown cheat sheet
Every mark on one page — headings, lists, tables, links, code, task lists, maths and diagrams — each one shown beside what it renders as. Including the parts that only work in some places, and which those are.
Read the cheat sheet →How to open a .md file
What a .md file actually is, how to read one in a
second, and how to make it open on double-click on Windows, Mac,
Linux or a phone. Every tool named honestly, ours included.
Open something and see
It takes one click and no decisions. If it is not for you, there is nothing to cancel and nothing to uninstall.