Comparison
A MacDown alternative that still gets updates
MacDown earned its 9,800 stars, and its last release was January 2020. On 1 September 2026 its Homebrew cask stops installing, and macOS has already started warning that Intel-only apps are running out of road. Glance is a maintained replacement that runs natively on Apple Silicon, previews in Finder, and lets you edit the rendered page.
Glance vs MacDown
GlanceWhat happens on 1 September
Homebrew marked the macdown cask deprecated for failing the Gatekeeper check and set it to disable on 2026-09-01. From that date brew install --cask macdown stops working, which matters because the cask still pulls close to nineteen thousand installs a year. A lot of people are about to find out at the worst moment.
Glance is signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and stapled, which is the specific check MacDown fails. It updates itself in the background and installs the update when you next open it.
The preview pane, turned around
MacDown puts raw Markdown in the left half of the window and a preview in the right. You type ## Heading on one side and watch a heading appear on the other. It was a good design in 2014, and it settles which half you can touch: the rendered side only ever reflects the source, so every correction starts by finding the matching source line.
Glance starts from the rendered document and makes that the editable surface. Click a sentence and type, select two words for a formatting toolbar, click a table cell and Tab across the row. Type ## at the start of a line and it turns into a heading as you type it.
The source is there when you want it. ⌘\ opens it in a pane beside the page, the two scroll together, and you can type in either one, so a change on the left shows up on the right and the other way round. The difference from MacDown is which pane is live: in Glance, both are.
Replace MacDown before September
Free to read, Pro to edit · v0.2.2 · 9.8 MB · macOS 14+
The Finder preview MacDown never shipped
MacDown has no Quick Look extension, and people keep asking. The request is still open in the tracker, filed in March 2026: previewing a .md from Finder by hitting the space bar. One user forked the project to add it himself.
Glance bundles its Quick Look extension and registers it the first time you open the app. Select any .md file in Finder, press Space, and the rendered document appears with tables, syntax-highlighted code, Mermaid diagrams, and LaTeX. Press Return to open it and start typing. Full steps are on the Finder preview guide.
Credit where it is due
MacDown was free, open source, and the default recommendation on the Mac for years, which is why nearly ten thousand people starred it and why the cask still gets used. Glance is closed source and charges for editing, so if an auditable, free, open-source editor is the requirement, look at MarkEdit before you look here.
Related
New to Quick Look extensions? Start with Markdown Quick Look for macOS. Comparing others? See QLMarkdown, Marked, MarkEdit, Typora, and MarkText, or the roundup of Mac Markdown apps.
FAQ
MacDown's Homebrew cask is deprecated for failing the Gatekeeper check, with a disable date of 1 September 2026. After that, brew install --cask macdown stops working. The app itself last shipped a release in January 2020, so macOS has been getting less friendly to it for a while.
No native build has ever shipped, so the original MacDown runs through Rosetta 2. A pull request adding universal support has been open since 2021 and a second attempt was closed unmerged in 2025. Apple has said Rosetta stays through macOS 27 and then narrows to certain older games, which puts a clock on it. A community fork, MacDown 3000, does ship a universal build if you want to stay with MacDown. Glance runs natively on Apple Silicon with no Rosetta in the way. It does need an Apple Silicon Mac, though — there's no Intel build.
For reading and correcting Markdown, yes, and it adds previewing in Finder, which MacDown never had. The split works the other way round: MacDown puts source on the left and a read-only preview on the right, while Glance shows the rendered document and opens the source beside it on Command-backslash, with both panes editable.
Yes. That request sat open in MacDown's tracker for years. Glance bundles a Quick Look extension, so pressing Space on any .md file in Finder shows the rendered document with tables, code, Mermaid diagrams, and LaTeX math.
Reading is free forever, where MacDown was free and open source throughout. Editing the rendered page is Glance Pro, free for 14 days and then $9.99 once for up to three Macs.
Ready to glance?
Free to read, Pro to edit · v0.2.2 · 9.8 MB · macOS 14+
Notes
- Compared 30 July 2026 against the original MacDown 0.7.3, released January 2020, whose repository has 571 open issues and no commits since April 2021. MacDown is free and open source, and a community fork, MacDown 3000, ships a universal build. ↩
- Reading Glance is free with no account and no time limit. Editing is Glance Pro: free for 14 days, then a $9.99 one-time license covering up to three Macs. There is no subscription. ↩
- No native Apple Silicon build of the original MacDown has shipped, so it runs through Rosetta 2. A pull request adding universal support has been open since 2021, and a second attempt was closed unmerged in 2025. Apple has said Rosetta stays through macOS 27 and then narrows to certain older games. Glance is an Apple Silicon build and needs an Apple Silicon Mac: there is no Intel version, where MacDown runs on Intel natively. ↩
- Homebrew lists the macdown cask as deprecated with reason fails_gatekeeper_check and a disable date of 2026-09-01, after which it will no longer install. ↩
- Download sizes measured 30 July 2026: Glance 9.8 MB, MacDown 0.7.3 19.9 MB (MacDown.app.zip from the 0.7.3 release). Both figures are the download, not the installed footprint, which varies by machine. ↩