MacMD Viewer vs QLMarkdown: Free Quick Look or Paid Reader (2026)

MacMD Viewer vs QLMarkdown: which one should you install?

QLMarkdown is free, open source and actively maintained — version 1.5.2 shipped on 2026-06-30 and the last commit landed on 2026-07-06 (GitHub, checked 2026-07-28). If what you want is a Quick Look preview of .md files in Finder and nothing else, install QLMarkdown, close this page, and keep your money.

That is the honest starting position, and everything below assumes you have read it. I am Arthur, the solo developer of MacMD Viewer — $19.99 one-time, no subscription, no trial. Selling against a good free tool by pretending it is bad would be both dishonest and easy to disprove: QLMarkdown has 3,239 stars, 95 forks, 28 open issues and 6 open pull requests, and it is not archived (GitHub REST API, 2026-07-28).

So this page answers a narrower question. The two products do not compete on the same axis, and the clearest proof of that comes from QLMarkdown's own documentation.

Is QLMarkdown still maintained in 2026?

Yes, and the evidence is recent. Release 1.5.2 is dated 2026-06-30. The last commit on main, 2026-07-06, merged pull request #225 from an outside contributor. The repository is not archived, and the project has been signed and notarized since version 1.5.0 on 2026-04-08 (GitHub Releases and README, checked 2026-07-28).

Two more numbers, same day, same sources: QLMarkdown 1.5.2 was downloaded 35,322 times in its first four weeks (GitHub Releases API), and the Homebrew cask recorded 29,387 installs over 365 days, 3,464 of them in the last 30 (Homebrew Formulae analytics).

I have to correct my own site here. My Markdown Quick Look setup guide said the Homebrew cask was deprecated with a September 2026 disable date. That is wrong today: the Homebrew Formulae API returned deprecated: false, disabled: false and null dates on 2026-07-28, serving 1.5.2. The same guide said QLMarkdown had no Mermaid support; it has had it since 1.0.24, released 2026-01-18. Both claims are being fixed in the same change that publishes this page.

Why does QLMarkdown say it is not a Markdown viewer?

Because that is what its author decided it should be. The README states, twice and in bold: "This application is not intended to be used as a standalone markdown file editor or viewer." The main window exists "only to set Quick Look preview formatting preferences" (README, checked 2026-07-28).

What QLMarkdown actually ships is precise and small: a Quick Look extension, an experimental Shortcuts action that converts Markdown to HTML, a command-line executable called qlmarkdown_cli, and a graphical settings panel to configure the preview. That is a well-scoped tool, not a reduced app.

It also explains a recurring confusion. People install QLMarkdown expecting a reader, then wonder why it never appears in Finder's "Open With" menu — issue #190 collected five comments on exactly that. The README answers it directly in its own FAQ: "This is a desired behaviour. QLMarkdown is not intended to be used as a standalone markdown file editor or viewer." A Quick Look preview is a modal panel that dismisses when you click elsewhere. It is built for a glance, not for a read.

Where QLMarkdown beats MacMD Viewer

QLMarkdown does five things better than MacMD Viewer, and none of them are small. It is free. It highlights 221 languages against my ~34. It renders LaTeX math and I render none. It supports macOS 11 while I require macOS 14. And it reads file formats I do not touch. If any of those matter to you, this comparison is already over.

• Syntax highlighting breadth. QLMarkdown uses André Simon's Highlight library, whose langDefs/ directory holds 221 language definitions (GitHub, 2026-07-28). MacMD Viewer's bundled highlight.js declares 36 grammars, two of which are sub-grammars — roughly 34 languages. Common languages are covered on both sides, but the ceiling is not the same.
• LaTeX math. QLMarkdown renders $…$ and $$…$$ through MathJax. MacMD Viewer has no LaTeX or KaTeX support whatsoever. Academic and scientific notes belong in QLMarkdown.
• File formats. .mdx, .qmd (Quarto), .rmd, .mdc (Cursor rules), .apib and textbundle packages all preview in QLMarkdown. MacMD Viewer registers .md, .markdown, .mdown, .mkd, .mkdn, .mdwn, .mdtxt and .mdtext — the .md family and nothing else. Quarto and R Markdown users should stop here and install QLMarkdown.
• Older Macs. QLMarkdown's cask requires macOS 11 or later; MacMD Viewer needs macOS 14. On a 2017 Mac, there is no decision to make.
• Privacy posture. QLMarkdown's README says it "does not collect any information about your system or the files it processes". MacMD Viewer ships anonymous usage analytics through TelemetryDeck. No file content leaves your machine, but the honest comparison is: one collects nothing, one collects something.

What MacMD Viewer does that QLMarkdown does not

Everything below follows from the same root cause: QLMarkdown is an extension with a preferences window, and MacMD Viewer is a reading app that also ships an extension. Neither design is better in the abstract. They answer different questions.

A window you can actually read in

MacMD Viewer opens a document in a real window that stays open. You scroll, you navigate, you leave it on a second monitor while you work. Quick Look cannot do that by construction — press Space, glance, press Space again. When a README runs to forty screens of prose, that difference stops being cosmetic.

12 document themes instead of one plus a CSS file

MacMD Viewer ships 12 document themes: default light and dark, GitHub light and dark, serif light and dark, sepia, Solarized Light, Dracula, Nord, Tokyo Night and Atom One Dark. You pick one from a menu. QLMarkdown ships a single GitHub-derived style with light and dark variants; anything else means writing your own stylesheet with prefers-color-scheme media queries. That is a fine escape hatch for someone who writes CSS, and a dead end for everyone else.

Live reload in the window you read in

MacMD Viewer watches the file. Save in your editor — or let a coding agent write the file — and the rendered document reloads in place, still read-only. This is the workflow the app exists for: write on one side, read the rendered result on the other.

QLMarkdown is not blind to file changes, and it would be wrong to say it is. Its 1.5.2 release notes list "Fixed auto-reload breaking when the file is saved by another app", so the inline editor in the settings window does pick up an external save (GitHub Releases, checked 2026-07-28). But that window exists to test preview settings, and the README says so; the Quick Look panel itself is modal and closes on your next click. The difference is not reload against no reload. It is which window the reload happens in — a preferences sheet, or the document you are reading.

Mermaid without waiting for a download

Both render Mermaid diagrams. The difference is where the JavaScript lives. QLMarkdown's README explains that "at the first execution of the main Application a local copy of the libraries are downloaded and cached", with an option to link cdn.jsdelivr.net instead, which requires an internet connection. MacMD Viewer ships mermaid.min.js inside the Quick Look extension itself — 2.8 MB of it — so a diagram renders on the first .md file you press Space on, offline, with nothing to fetch first.

Support as a contract

GPL-3.0 provides the software "as is, without any warranty of any kind", and QLMarkdown is funded by a buy-me-a-coffee link. That is a legitimate model that has produced a genuinely good tool. It is also not the same thing as a developer whose income depends on answering your email. Paying $19.99 does not buy better code; it buys someone who owes you a reply.

Does QLMarkdown work on macOS 26.5?

It installs and runs, and two rendering bugs were open on macOS 26.5 as of 2026-07-28. Issue #197, filed 2026-04-23 and last active 2026-06-29, reports long multi-page previews going blank past a certain point on a macOS 26.5 beta build (25F5053d). Issue #228, opened 2026-07-18 and still without a reply, reports File > Print producing a blank page in 1.5.2 on macOS 26.5.1.

Read those as a dated snapshot, not a verdict. One is filed against a beta build, the other against a single point release, neither has been confirmed here, and an open issue on a project that merged an external pull request three weeks ago is a maintenance queue, not a warning sign. Two older functional gaps are worth knowing about too: GitHub admonitions written as > [!NOTE] are not rendered (issue #170, open since 2025-10-28), and there is no preview in Finder's Column view pane (issue #191, open since 2026-04-11 and unresolved).

Is $19.99 worth paying when QLMarkdown is free?

Not for a Finder preview. QLMarkdown does that job well, for nothing, and installing it takes one Homebrew command. The $19.99 becomes defensible at the moment previewing stops being the task — when you are reading long documents, want them to look a particular way, and want the rendering to follow the file as it changes.

Concretely, MacMD Viewer is worth paying for if you read Markdown daily rather than checking it occasionally, if you keep a rendered document open next to an editor or a coding agent, if you want Solarized or Nord without writing CSS, or if you want a person to email when something breaks. If none of that describes your week, QLMarkdown is the correct answer and this page just saved you twenty dollars.

For the wider field of options — free viewers, editors with preview panes, and paid readers — the Markdown viewers for macOS roundup covers more ground than a head-to-head can.

Who should stay with QLMarkdown?

Stay with QLMarkdown if any of the following is true, and there is no ambiguity about it.

• You want a free Finder preview and nothing more.
• Your Mac runs macOS 11, 12 or 13.
• Your documents contain LaTeX math.
• You work in .qmd, .rmd, .mdx or .mdc files.
• You need obscure language highlighting beyond the ~34 languages I bundle.
• You want a command-line Markdown-to-HTML converter in the same package.
• You require a tool that collects no telemetry of any kind.

Either way, the extension has to be enabled in System Settings before Finder will use it. My Quick Look setup guide covers that for both apps, including qlmanage -r when previews go stale, and the Quick Look feature page shows what MacMD Viewer's own extension renders.

The bottom line

QLMarkdown is a good, maintained, signed and notarized Quick Look extension that costs nothing, and its author is explicit that it is not a Markdown viewer. MacMD Viewer is a Markdown viewer that also ships a Quick Look extension. The comparison is really a question about which of those two sentences describes what you need.

It wins on price, language coverage, math, file formats and OS support. MacMD Viewer wins on having a reading window at all, on 12 themes, on live reload inside that window, on offline Mermaid, and on someone being paid to answer you. Pick the sentence that matches your week.

---

Buy MacMD Viewer — $19.99 one-time. Get it on the pricing page: no subscription, no trial, 14-day refund. macOS 14+, universal Apple Silicon and Intel. Also on Setapp and Homebrew (brew install --cask macmd-viewer).