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A markdown viewer for the terminal that renders images and Big Headers™

408 starsRust

MdFried, the Ultimate Markdown Viewer

by the_gipsy·Jun 21, 2026·2 points·0 comments

AI Analysis

●●●BangerNiche GemWizardryCozy

Headers rendered as actual bigger text via image protocols, not just bold.

Strengths
  • Genuinely inventive approach: rendering text as images for real font sizing in terminals
  • Author wrote ratatui-image library, showing deep technical understanding
  • Supports multiple graphics protocols with graceful fallback to chafa
Weaknesses
  • Requires image-capable terminals (Kitty, WezTerm, Ghostty) for full experience
  • Niche audience limits broader adoption despite clever implementation
Target Audience

Terminal enthusiasts, developers who read markdown in CLI

Similar To

glow · bat · less

Post Description

This is my markdown viewer for the terminal. It's most notable feature is that it displays headers Bigger™ then other text. This was my main motivation for writing this, as big headers make markdown really more readable and was the only thing making me reach outside of a terminal for reading markdown documents.

I did this by leveraging ratatui-image, which I also had written for another thing. MdFried tries to get your terminal's font, or otherwise prompts you with a font picker. The headers are then rendered as images with cosmic-text. Notably, on kitty there is a [text sizing protocol], which is implemented by MdFried as alternative.

Images are of course also displayed. Note that not every terminal can display images, or display images reliably enough for a TUI. Your best bets are popular terminals such as Kitty, Ghostty, Foot, or WezTerm. Terminals that don't have image support can of course still use MdFried as plain (and boring) markdown viewer.

[text sizing protocol]: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/text-sizing-protocol

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