Everything below renders Markdown when you press Space in Finder, with one deliberate exception included because people keep expecting it to. They are not interchangeable: one is a preview extension, two are readers that include one, and one is an editor that has no preview extension at all.
| App | What it is | Quick Look | Price | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| nicemd | Reader with Quick Look, plus a live editor | Yes | $4.99 | macOS 14 or later |
| Glance | Reader with Quick Look, plus a live editor | Yes | $9.99 | macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon |
| QLMarkdown | Quick Look extension only | Yes | Free | macOS 11 or later |
| Typora | Full Markdown editor | No | $14.99 | macOS, Windows and Linux |
The short version
- Just want Space to render Markdown, for free? Any of QLMarkdown, Glance or nicemd — all three put the Quick Look extension in the free tier, and none of them charges for rendering.
- Want a window to read in as well? Glance or nicemd. A Quick Look panel has no outline, no find and no scroll position to come back to, which is fine for a glance and wrong for a spec.
- Want to write Markdown all day? Typora. It is an excellent editor and it is not trying to be any of the above.
- On macOS 11, 12 or 13? QLMarkdown. Glance and nicemd both need macOS 14, so it is the only one of these that will render Markdown in Quick Look for you at all.
What separates them
QLMarkdown — the extension
Free, open source, actively maintained, and Quick Look only. There is no document window; the settings app exists to configure the preview, not to read in. It handles more file extensions than anything else here — .rmd, .mdx and .textbundle included — and lets you turn individual Markdown extensions on and off. If Quick Look is the whole of your problem, this solves it for nothing.
nicemd vs QLMarkdown in detail →
Glance — the closest thing to nicemd
Native, free to read, Quick Look in the free tier, Mermaid and LaTeX bundled offline, editing as a one-time purchase. That is nicemd's description as well, and pretending otherwise would be silly. The differences are real but narrow: Glance's free tier includes a raw-source pane and it previews JSON and YAML as well as Markdown; nicemd's unlock is cheaper, adds Word export, and installs from the App Store.
Typora — the editor that has no preview extension
Included because people install it expecting Finder previews to start working, and they do not. Typora ships no Quick Look extension — everything it does happens inside its own window. As an editor it is genuinely excellent, and it pairs fine with any of the others.
nicemd
Ours, so weigh this accordingly. A reader with a Quick Look extension in the free tier, an outline sidebar, find, and live reload built to survive tools that replace a file rather than edit it in place. Editing, split view and HTML and Word export are a one-time $4.99 unlock; PDF export is free.
Two things that catch people out
Do not install two. If more than one app registers a Markdown Quick Look extension, they compete for the file type and the winner is not something you control. Pick one and turn the others off in System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Quick Look.
Installing is not enough. macOS registers an extension the first time the containing app runs, and apps run from Downloads or a mounted disk image are frequently ignored. Move it to /Applications and open it once. If Space still shows source, work down the diagnostic checklist.
What is not on this list
MacDown comes up in older recommendations and should not. It has had no release since 0.7.3 in January 2020, and its Homebrew cask was disabled on 1 September 2026 for failing Homebrew's Gatekeeper check. The app you already have keeps running. Its maintained continuation, MacDown 3000, is free and open source — MacDown alternatives compared →
Obsidian and Notion are knowledge bases that happen to store Markdown. If you want a linked vault, that is a different decision and neither is competing with anything above.
VS Code renders Markdown in a side pane with ⇧⌘V, which is fine when the editor is already open and a lot of machinery when it is not. It adds nothing to Finder.
Written by the people who make nicemd, so read it with that in mind. Facts about other apps come from their own websites and release notes, checked September 2026; everything framed as a preference is a preference. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and it gets corrected.