TL;DR — Quick Summary
Glow renders Markdown files beautifully in your terminal. Read READMEs, docs, and notes with syntax highlighting, word wrap, and a stash for favorites.
Glow turns your terminal into a Markdown reader. READMEs, documentation, notes — all rendered beautifully with styled headers, code blocks, and tables.
Installation
# macOS
brew install glow
# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S glow
# Snap
sudo snap install glow
# Go install
go install github.com/charmbracelet/glow@latestUsage
# Render a specific file
glow README.md
glow CHANGELOG.md
glow docs/guide.md
# Browse all Markdown in current directory
glow
# Read from stdin
cat README.md | glow -
echo "# Hello" | glow -
# Read from URL
glow https://raw.githubusercontent.com/charmbracelet/glow/main/README.md
# Set width
glow -w 80 README.md
# Pager mode (less-like scrolling)
glow -p README.md
# Style themes
glow -s dark README.md
glow -s light README.md
glow -s notty README.md # No colors (for piping)Comparison
| Feature | Glow | bat | cat | mdcat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Renders MD | Yes | No (source) | No | Yes |
| Code blocks | Styled | Highlighted | Raw | Styled |
| Tables | Formatted | Raw | Raw | Formatted |
| Links | Colored | Raw | Raw | Colored |
| Stash | Yes | No | No | No |
| URLs | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Summary
- Glow renders Markdown in the terminal — styled headers, code blocks, tables, links
- Browse all Markdown in a directory or render a specific file
- Read from URLs, stdin, or local files
- Built-in stash to save favorite documents
- Dark/light style themes and configurable width