Glow: Your New CLI Markdown Best Friend

If you live in the terminal like most developers, you've probably encountered a common annoyance: reading markdown files. Sure, you could open them in a GUI editor or hope your terminal handles the formatting decently, but what if you could actually render beautiful, styled markdown right there in your command line? That's exactly what Glow delivers.

This isn't just another markdown parser—it's a thoughtfully designed tool that makes reading documentation, notes, and README files in the terminal actually pleasant. No more squinting at raw markdown syntax or constantly switching between your terminal and browser.

What It Does

Glow is a command-line markdown reader that takes your markdown files and renders them with proper formatting, styles, and layouts directly in your terminal. It handles everything from headers and lists to code blocks and tables, presenting them in a clean, readable format that respects the original markdown structure.

Think of it as a mini markdown previewer that lives right where you already work. You can point it at local files, URLs, or even standard input, and it just works.

Why It's Cool

What sets Glow apart is how it transforms the typically utilitarian experience of reading markdown in the terminal. The rendering is genuinely beautiful—with proper spacing, syntax highlighting for code blocks, and thoughtful use of terminal colors that make documents easy to scan.

But it's not just about looks. Glow has some clever features that show the developers really understand workflow:

• It can cache GitHub markdown files locally, so you're not constantly re-downloading the same documentation
• There's a "stash" feature for saving markdown snippets you reference frequently
• It handles both light and dark terminal themes intelligently
• You can use it to style markdown from stdin, making it perfect for pipes in your workflow

The implementation is solid too—it's written in Go, compiles to a single binary with no dependencies, and works consistently across different platforms.

How to Try It

Getting started with Glow is straightforward. You can install it via package managers:

# macOS
brew install glow

# Linux (various package managers available)
sudo apt install glow

# Or download the binary directly from releases

Once installed, using it is dead simple:

# Read a local file
glow README.md

# Read from a GitHub URL
glow https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow/README.md

# Pipe content to it
echo "# Hello World" | glow

# Explore your stash
glow stash

Final Thoughts

As someone who spends way too much time reading documentation and project READMEs, Glow has become one of those "how did I live without this" tools. It's particularly useful when you're SSH'd into a server, working in a minimal environment, or just want to stay in your terminal flow without context switching.

The Charmbracelet team (who also created the excellent Bubble Tea framework) has once again delivered a tool that feels both polished and practical. It's the kind of quality-of-life improvement that doesn't try to be everything to everyone—it does one job and does it exceptionally well.

Give it a try next time you're digging through markdown files. Your terminal—and your eyes—will thank you.

Follow for more cool projects: @githubprojects