Comparison

A MarkText alternative that previews in Finder

MarkText is a free, MIT-licensed editor that hides the syntax as you type, and it is shipping again after a quiet couple of years. Two things it does not do: render a .md file when you press Space in Finder, and download in under 121.7 MB. Glance does both, and it draws math and diagrams without a browser engine.

Glance vs MarkText

	Glance	MarkText1
Pricing2	Free to read, $9.99 to edit	Free
Preview on Space in Finder3
Rendering4	Native	Electron
Type on the rendered page
Mermaid diagrams
LaTeX math
Source beside the rendered page
Print and PDF export
Download size5	9.8 MB	121.7 MB

First, the thing people get wrong about MarkText

Search results still say the project is abandoned. It is not. Version 0.19.1 shipped in June 2026, a 0.20.0 release candidate followed in July, and commits have carried on since. If you were looking for a MarkText alternative because you thought it was dead, that reason has expired, and you should know it before reading the rest of this page.

What follows is a comparison of two different tools, not an obituary.

Space, in Finder

MarkText has no Quick Look extension, so a .md file in Finder still previews as unrendered syntax in a small window. To read the document you open the app.

Open Glance once and it registers its Quick Look extension. From then on, Space on any Markdown file brings up the rendered document, with tables, syntax-highlighted code, Mermaid diagrams, and LaTeX math, drawn by the same renderer the main window uses so the two match. Press Return to open it and start typing. Steps are on the Finder preview guide.

121.7 MB against 9.8 MB

MarkText 0.19.1 is a 121.7 MB download for the Apple Silicon build. Glance is 9.8 MB. Electron is the reason: MarkText carries a browser engine so the same code can run on macOS, Windows, and Linux, which is a reasonable trade if you need all three.

Glance is macOS only and spends that constraint on the rendering. Text goes through Core Text, diagrams through Core Graphics, and LaTeX and Mermaid render to images before the first frame, so every block height is known up front and the document does not shift under you while it loads.

Both panes are live

MarkText hides the syntax as you type, which is a good way to write. Glance starts from the other end: it draws the finished 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, or rewrite a Mermaid diagram over the diagram it draws and press ⌘↩.

When you want the raw text, ⌘\ opens it beside the page. The panes scroll together block by block, your cursor and selection show up in both, and typing in either updates the other.

Where MarkText is the better pick

It is free and MIT licensed, so you can read, fork, and fix it, none of which Glance offers. It runs on Windows and Linux, and on Intel Macs, where Glance needs macOS 14 on an Apple Silicon Mac. It has a file tree and a document sidebar for working through a folder, and it costs nothing to edit with. If open source is the requirement, take MarkText, or look at MarkEdit for something much smaller.

Related

New to Quick Look extensions? Start with Markdown Quick Look for macOS. Comparing others? See Typora, Obsidian, MacDown, and MarkEdit, or the roundup of Mac Markdown apps.