Comparison
A QLMarkdown alternative for macOS
QLMarkdown put Markdown into Quick Look years before anyone else, and it still ships. Glance keeps the Finder convenience and changes what sits underneath: the page is drawn on your Mac, the renderers travel inside the app, and you can fix the line that's wrong.
Glance vs QLMarkdown
GlanceThe web view is the difference
QLMarkdown converts your document to HTML and puts a WebKit view on screen to display it. Everything else follows from that: the HTML has to be built, a web engine has to start, and the stylesheet decides what you see. Its README carries a section on Quick Look and WebView bugs, which tells you how much of the work goes into keeping that arrangement stable inside a preview panel.
Glance parses the Markdown and draws it with Core Text and Core Graphics. Mermaid diagrams and LaTeX equations 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.
The renderers travel with the app
Rendering math and diagrams in a web view means getting hold of the JavaScript that does it. QLMarkdown does not bundle MathJax or Mermaid. Its README describes linking them from cdn.jsdelivr.net and caching a local copy the first time you run the app, and one user cared about that arrangement enough to open issue #158 over it.
Glance ships its renderers inside the binary. Previewing makes zero network requests on any run, including the first, so a fresh install renders math on a plane and nothing about your documents leaves the Mac. The one request Glance ever makes is its update check, which you can switch off.
Switch to native Markdown previews
Free to read, Pro to edit · v0.2.2 · 9.8 MB · macOS 14+
The part QLMarkdown will not do
QLMarkdown renders, and stops there. When the README is wrong you close the preview, find the file, open an editor, hunt for the line, change it, save, and go back.
Glance opens the same document in its own window and lets you click the sentence and type. Select text for a formatting toolbar, click a table cell and Tab through the row, or rewrite a Mermaid diagram on top of the diagram it draws. Glance saves plain Markdown, so your file stays a file that any other tool can read. The Quick Look preview itself stays read-only, which is how macOS intends it.
The rest of the window costs nothing: ⌘F searches with every match highlighted, ⌘P prints, ⇧⌘E exports a PDF that breaks between lines and table rows instead of through them, ⌘T opens another document in a tab, and pinching zooms around your pointer.
When you want the raw text, ⌘\ opens the Markdown in a pane beside the rendered page. The panes scroll together and both accept typing, so you can work in whichever one suits the change.
Where QLMarkdown is the better pick
It is GPL-3.0, so you can audit it, fork it, or fix it yourself, none of which Glance offers. It carries a deep settings panel for people who want to configure extensions, themes, and rendering behavior, where Glance ships one set of decisions and no options. Both are free to read with, and both are signed and notarized.
If you are switching
Install Glance and open it once, then switch the other Markdown Quick Look extension off in System Settings, under General, then Login Items & Extensions, then Quick Look. macOS answers with one renderer per file type, so leaving both on makes the result a coin toss. Full steps are on the preview Markdown in Finder guide.
For the wider picture, read the Markdown Quick Look for macOS overview, or compare against the paid preview app Marked. For editors rather than previewers, see Typora, MarkEdit, and the roundup of Mac Markdown apps.
FAQ
For the job you use it for, yes. Both add a Quick Look extension, so pressing Space on a .md file shows the rendered document. Glance draws the page with Core Text and Core Graphics rather than loading a web view, ships its math and diagram renderers inside the app, and lets you edit the rendered page in its own window.
No. QLMarkdown is GPL-3.0 and you can read and fork every line of it. Glance is closed source, distributed as a Developer ID signed and notarized disk image. If auditable source is what you need, QLMarkdown is the better answer.
Yes. QLMarkdown released version 1.5.2 on 30 June 2026 and has thousands of users. Glance differs on how the rendering works and on what you can do once the document is open, not on whether the project is alive.
Keep one Markdown Quick Look extension enabled at a time. macOS picks a single renderer per file type, so with two installed you cannot predict which one answers. Switch the other off in System Settings, then General, then Login Items & Extensions, then Quick Look.
No. Install it, open it once, and previews work. QLMarkdown takes the opposite approach with a settings panel covering extensions, themes, and rendering options, which is a real advantage if you want that control.
Reading is free forever, the same as QLMarkdown. 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 QLMarkdown 1.5.2, released 30 June 2026. QLMarkdown is free and GPL-3.0 licensed. ↩
- 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. ↩
- QLMarkdown does not bundle MathJax or Mermaid: its README describes linking them from cdn.jsdelivr.net and caching a local copy on first run. Glance ships both renderers inside the binary, so previewing makes no network requests on any run, including the first. ↩
- Download sizes measured 30 July 2026: Glance 9.8 MB, QLMarkdown 1.5.2 20.6 MB (QLMarkdown.zip). Both figures are the download, not the installed footprint, which varies by machine. ↩