• MD-TUI
  • Installation
    • Requirements
  • Usage
  • Key binds
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Configuration
    • Keyboard actions
    • Colors and misc
  • Links
  • Neovim plugin
  • Contributions
  • Use as library

MD-TUI is a terminal-based application for viewing and navigating Markdown files. It focuses on keyboard navigation and functional link navigation.

• Keyboard-driven navigation
• Internal and external links
• File tree for browsing Markdown files
• Search and link selection modes
• Optional image rendering, depending on terminal support

Prebuilt binaries with install script can be found on the release page.

Using cargo: cargo install md-tui --locked

On Arch Linux: pacman -S md-tui

For Nix users, there's also Nix flake.

On conda-forge: pixi global install md-tui or pixi exec -s md-tui -- mdt my-file.md

1. A terminal
2. Nerd font

Start the program running mdt <file.md> or just mdt. The latter will search recursively from where it was invoked for Markdown files and present them in a file tree.

You can also pipe the content into the program. Example: cat README.md | mdt.

These are the default settings. See keyboard configuration for configuration options.

MD-TUI supports syntax highlighting in code blocks for the following languages:

• Bash/sh
• C/C++
• Css
• Elixir
• Go
• Html
• Java
• JavaScript
• Json
• Lua
• Luau
• Ocaml
• PHP
• Python
• Rust
• Scala
• Typescript
• Yaml

The program checks for the file ~/.config/mdt/config.toml at startup. The following parameters and their defaults are written below.

Some key actions are not configurable, including:

• Enter
• Arrow keys
• Escape
• Question mark for help menu
• 'q' to quit the application
• '/' for search

If you override another default key, it's undefined behavior if that key does not get reassigned.

Actions can only be assigned to single characters. Space, fn keys, ctrl+key, backspace etc., will not take effect and the default will be in use.

# Keyboard actions
up = 'k'
down = 'j'
page_up = 'u'
page_down = 'd'
half_page_down = 'l'
half_page_up = 'h'
top = 'g'
bottom = 'G'
search = 'f'
search_next = 'n'
search_previous = 'N'
# This will search downwards until it finds one or select the last link in document.
select_link = 's'
# Finds the link 2/3 up the page. It will search then for closest in both direction.
select_link_alt = 'S'
edit = 'e'
hover = 'K'
back = 'b'
file_tree = 't'
sort = 'o'

Setting color to "" will not remove it, but leave it as its default. To remove colors, set it to reset.

# General settings
width = 100 # Set to 0 for full terminal width
gitignore = false
alignment = "left" # "center" | "right"
help_menu = true # false hides it

# Inline styling
bold_color = "reset"
bold_italic_color = "reset"
code_bg_color = "#2A2A2A"
code_fg_color = "red"
italic_color = "reset"
link_color = "blue"
link_selected_bg_color = "darkgrey"
link_selected_fg_color = "green"
strikethrough_color = "reset"

# Block styling
code_block_bg_color = "#2A2A2A"
quote_bg_color = "reset"
table_header_bg_color = "reset"
table_header_fg_color = "yellow"

# File tree
file_tree_name_color = "blue"
file_tree_page_count_color = "lightgreen"
file_tree_path_color = "gray"
file_tree_selected_fg_color = "lightgreen"

# Quote bar
quote_caution = "lightmagenta"
quote_default = "white"
quote_important = "lightred"
quote_note = "lightblue"
quote_tip = "lightgreen"
quote_warning = "lightYellow"

# Heading
h_bg_color = "blue"
h_fg_color = "black"
h2_fg_color = "green"
h3_fg_color = "magenta"
h4_fg_color = "cyan"
h5_fg_color = "yellow"
h6_fg_color = "lightred"

MD-TUI supports the following link formats:

• [text](url)
• [[link]]
• [[link|Some title]]

This application also exists as a plugin for Neovim called Preview.

Both PRs and issues are appreciated!

It's possible to use this as a library. It's not well documented for that use, but the feature is there. There is one default feature attached, which is the whole highlighting of code blocks.