spacebarQLMarkdown And spacebar
Two free, open-source Quick Look extensions that render Markdown in Finder, with different aims
QLMarkdown (opens in a new tab), by sbarex, is a long-standing project with thousands of stars on GitHub and a deep set of Markdown options. spacebar is newer and puts more of the work inside the preview: editing, live updates and a file browser. If QLMarkdown serves you well, there is no need to switch.
At A Glance
| Feature | spacebar | QLMarkdown |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Install | One Terminal command; not notarized yet | Homebrew cask or a download; notarized and signed |
| Renderer | markdown-it | cmark-gfm, with many extensions you switch on in its settings |
| Math and Mermaid | KaTeX and Mermaid, bundled | MathJax and Mermaid, linked from a CDN or embedded, your choice |
| Themes | Six, each light and dark, plus your own CSS | A GitHub-style theme, light and dark, plus your own CSS |
| Editing | Click a paragraph to edit; ticked tasks save to the file | A preview only; its app has an editor for trying settings |
| Wikilinks | Open the linked note in the panel; embeds, callouts and tags too | Rendered as links; GitHub alerts and MkDocs admonitions as callouts |
| Beyond .md | A sidebar that previews images, PDFs, code, JSON and CSV beside the file; optional folder previews | R Markdown, MDX, Quarto, API Blueprint, Cursor rules, TextBundle and .mermaid files |
| Also | Live updates, word count and reading time | A table of contents sidebar; a command-line tool and a Shortcuts action that convert Markdown to HTML; emoji shortcodes |
Checked against spacebar 0.1.1 and QLMarkdown 1.5.5 in September 2026. Spot a mistake? Tell me on X (opens in a new tab).
When QLMarkdown Fits Better
- You want a notarized app, or to install and update with Homebrew.
- You preview R Markdown, MDX, Quarto or API Blueprint files.
- You want to turn Markdown into HTML from the command line or Shortcuts.
- You rely on its extra syntax options, such as emoji shortcodes or sub- and superscript.
When spacebar Fits Better
- You fix a typo or tick a task without opening an editor.
- You watch a file as it changes, such as a plan a coding agent is writing.
- You read a note beside the images, PDFs and code in its folder, or browse an Obsidian vault.
- You want math and diagrams offline with nothing to set up.
Switching
Quick Look uses one previewer for a file type, so turn QLMarkdown’s extension off or macOS may keep using it. spacebar’s installer lists other Markdown previewers that are on and says how to turn them off, and its General settings find QLMarkdown; neither turns anything off for you.
curl -fsSL https://spacebar.patebryant.com/install.sh | sh
To go back, run curl -fsSL https://spacebar.patebryant.com/uninstall.sh | sh and turn QLMarkdown on again.