Glow

A native macOS Markdown viewer built with SwiftUI. Open a folder, browse your files, and read rendered Markdown — no editing, no bloat.

Features

• Folder-based browsing — Open any folder and navigate its Markdown files in a sidebar tree
• Search — Filter files by name across all subdirectories
• Flat list mode — Toggle between tree hierarchy and a flat file list with relative paths
• Recents — Quick access to your last 5 opened files
• Live reload — Files and directories are watched for changes and update automatically
• Table of contents — Jump to any heading with Cmd+T
• Syntax highlighting — Code blocks rendered with configurable themes
• Reading metrics — Word count and estimated reading time in the toolbar
• Drag and drop — Drop a folder onto the window to open it
• Customizable — Font size, code theme, and light/dark/system appearance in Settings

Requirements

• macOS 26.0 or later
• Xcode 26.2 (to build from source)
• XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen)

Build

git clone https://github.com/mrishwajeetsingh/glow.git
cd glow
xcodegen generate
open Glow.xcodeproj

Then hit Cmd+R in Xcode.

Install

To run Glow without Xcode open:

1. In Xcode, select Product > Archive
2. In the Organizer, click Distribute App > Direct Distribution
3. Export the .app and drag it to /Applications

Or build from the command line:

xcodebuild build -project Glow.xcodeproj -scheme Glow -configuration Release -destination "platform=macOS"

The built app is at DerivedData/Glow-*/Build/Products/Release/Glow.app.

Usage

Action	Shortcut
Open folder	Cmd+O
Table of contents	Cmd+T
Settings	Cmd+,
Search files	Type in sidebar search field
Toggle flat/tree view	Sidebar toolbar button

Open a folder containing .md, .markdown, .mdown, or .mkd files. Click any file in the sidebar to view it. The viewer re-renders automatically when files change on disk.

Architecture

SwiftUI Views  ->  @Observable ViewModels  ->  Services  ->  Models

Layer	Files
App	GlowApp.swift, ContentView.swift
Models	AppState.swift, FileNode.swift
ViewModels	DocumentViewModel.swift
Services	FileWatcher.swift
Views	FileTreeView.swift, MarkdownDetailView.swift, TOCPopoverView.swift, SettingsView.swift

Built with Swift 6 strict concurrency. All state management uses @Observable and @MainActor.

Dependencies

Package	Purpose
swift-markdown	AST parsing, heading extraction
MarkdownUI	Markdown rendering
HighlightSwift	Code syntax highlighting
NetworkImage	Image loading

Privacy & Security

• Sandboxed — App Sandbox enabled with read-only access to user-selected files only
• No network — Fully offline, no telemetry, no analytics
• URL filtering — Only https and http links are openable
• Symlink safe — Directory traversal via symlinks is blocked

License

MIT