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Glow

A terminal program that renders Markdown files nicely so you can read them in the command line.

GitHub Download v3.0.0
Stars
27.9k
Forks
811
Licence
MIT
Language
Go
Last update
1 months ago
Type
CLI

What it is

Glow is a command-line tool for reading Markdown files in your terminal with formatting, instead of as raw text. It can open a local file, read from standard input, or fetch a Markdown file from GitHub, GitLab, or a web address. It also has an interactive mode that finds Markdown files in the current folder or Git repository and opens them in a pager that works like less.

  • Read a local README.md with formatting by running glow README.md
  • Browse all Markdown files in the current folder or Git repository by running glow with no arguments
  • Read a file directly from GitHub with glow github.com/charmbracelet/glow
  • Pipe Markdown from another command into glow using stdin
  • Set a word-wrap width with glow -w 60

Great for

  • Developers who read README and documentation files from the terminal
  • People who work mostly in a command line and want readable Markdown without leaving it
  • Anyone who wants to browse Markdown files across a project folder or Git repo

Not ideal for

  • People who need to edit Markdown; the README describes only reading and rendering, not editing
  • Users who need a graphical document viewer; Glow is terminal-based only
  • Users who need to publish or convert Markdown to other formats such as PDF or HTML; the README does not mention this
Step-by-step guide: how to use GlowInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

How to get it

  1. 1

    Install with a package manager

    macOS or Linux (Homebrew)

    brew install glow

    Go install

    go install charm.land/glow/v3@latest
  2. 2

    Run it

    • Install glow using one of the commands above
    • Open a terminal and run glow README.md on any Markdown file
    • Run glow with no arguments to browse Markdown files in the current folder
    • Press ? in the interactive pager to list hotkeys
  3. 3

    Get the most out of it

    • Create a glow.yml config file (run glow config to open it in your editor) to save your preferred style, width, and pager settings
    • Use the -p flag to display output in your preferred pager
    • Use -s with a Glamour style name or a custom JSON stylesheet to change the look
    • Fetch remote Markdown directly from GitHub, GitLab, or an HTTP URL instead of downloading it first

Downloads

Source code (.zip)main branch · straight from GitHubRelease v3.0.08 files incl. glow_3.0.0_Linux_i386.tar.gz

Strengths

  • Installs through many package managers across macOS, Linux, Windows, and BSD systems
  • Adjusts colors automatically to light or dark terminal backgrounds, with a manual style option
  • Can be configured once with a glow.yml file so you do not repeat flags

Trade-offs

  • Only shows Markdown as rendered terminal output; it does not edit files or export them
  • Some features, such as the interactive browser's line numbers and mouse support, depend on the mode used, so behavior varies by context
  • The README is truncated and does not fully document all options; glow --help is referenced for details

How it compares

ProjectStarsTypeLevelUpdatedBest for
glow (this)27.9kCLIbeginner1 months agoDevelopers who read README and documentation files from the terminal
marktext63.5kAppbeginner4 days agoPeople who write notes or articles in Markdown and want a clean, minimal editor
gollum14.3kAppintermediate12 months agoTeams that want a wiki whose content lives in Git alongside other project files
slides11.7kAppbeginner4 months agoDevelopers who already live in the terminal and want to present technical material
markitdown193kLibrarybeginner8 days agoDevelopers building LLM or text analysis pipelines that need document text
memos64.2kAppintermediate4 days agoPeople who want a private, self-hosted journal or quick-notes timeline

Stats synced from GitHub. The assessment above was drafted with AI from the project's README on 2026-10-29 and may miss recent changes — check the README before relying on a command. MIT licence: free to use, modify and distribute, including commercially, as long as you keep the copyright notice.