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I would like to be able to read markdown (.md) files with Quick Look. Unfortunately, it just appears like this:

Markdown file macOS Quick Look

Is there any way that I can be able to see the contents of this file? I don't care whether it's in rendered or unrendered format, just that I can see it somehow.

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There is no setting in macOS to enable markdown support. However, Quick Look does allow for third party plugins to extend the base behavior. The QLMarkdown plugin is one such plugin that allows Markdown files to be read.

You can install it either by:

  • Download the QLMarkdown.qlgenerator in either ~/Library/QuickLook (current user) or /Library/QuickLook (all users).
  • Using Homebrew, run brew install toland-qlmarkdown in the Terminal

After that, you should be able to view markdown files.

Getting it to work on macOS Catalina - Source

If you got the security warning as shown below, go to System Preferences / Security & Privacy / General and click Allow Anyway at the bottom. enter image description here Now try to Quicklook a markdown file again. If it still doesn't work, run the following commands in your terminal.

brew install toland-qlmarkdown
xattr -cr ~/Library/QuickLook/QLMarkdown.qlgenerator
qlmanage -r
qlmanage -r cache
killall Finder  # relaunch finder

It should hopefully work now.

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    In case anybody is wondering, no I am not associated with this QLMarkdown. I self-answered this question because I had a problem and wanted to share my solution in case others ran into it too.
    – Thunderforge
    Sep 3, 2017 at 3:12
  • Good answer, can you please repost it on the question linked above (which covers the same topic but mentions the plugin only briefly)?
    – nohillside ♦
    Sep 3, 2017 at 4:20
  • @patrix Would that be appropriate? It looks like that question was just looking for applications. Also, wouldn't that make my question a duplicate of that one?
    – Thunderforge
    Sep 3, 2017 at 4:23
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    I've already closed your question here as a duplicate to the other one. Reposting the answer may raise an auto flag for the mods but we easily clear this flag without harm
    – nohillside ♦
    Sep 3, 2017 at 4:43
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    @patrix Thanks for clarifying. I wish the notification system would let users know when their questions are closed. I didn't realize that had happened until you mentioned it.
    – Thunderforge
    Sep 3, 2017 at 4:56

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