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How to open a .md file on a Mac

Double-clicking gives you TextEdit and a screen full of symbols. Here is how to open it as a readable document instead, and how to make that stick.

Updated October 12, 2026

Short answer: right-click the .md file in Finder, choose Open With, and pick an app. Every Mac can open it in TextEdit, but you will see the raw text, with # and ** symbols everywhere. To see it as a formatted document, with real headings, lists and tables, open it in a Markdown viewer such as nicemd, or press Space in Finder once a Quick Look extension is installed. To make every .md file open that way, use Get Info → Open with → Change All…

A .md file is a Markdown file: plain text with a few symbols that mark headings, bold text and lists. AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor write them all the time, and so do GitHub projects. If you want the longer explanation, see what is a .md file?

Four ways to open a .md file on a Mac

1. TextEdit: free, already installed, shows the raw text

  1. Right-click the file in Finder.
  2. Choose Open With → TextEdit.

You can read the words, but not the formatting. Headings show as lines starting with #, bold text is wrapped in asterisks, and tables turn into rows of pipes. Fine for a quick look at a short note. Tiring for a long plan or spec.

# Release notes

Two things changed this week:

- **Preview** now reloads when the file changes on disk
- Tables no longer overflow the window

| Area    | Status |
| ------- | ------ |
| Reading | Done   |
| Export  | Next   |

That is what TextEdit shows you. A Markdown viewer shows the same file as a page with a heading, a bulleted list and a real table.

2. Quick Look: press Space in Finder

  1. Select the file in Finder.
  2. Press Space. Press it again to close.

The fastest way to read a file once. On a Mac with nothing extra installed, Quick Look shows Markdown as plain text, because macOS has no Markdown renderer of its own. Installing an app with a Markdown Quick Look extension fixes that for every .md file on the machine. See Markdown Quick Look on macOS.

3. A Markdown viewer: the formatted document, in its own window

  1. Install a Markdown viewer, such as nicemd from the Mac App Store.
  2. Right-click the file → Open With → the viewer. Or drag the file onto its icon.

You get the document the way the author meant it: headings, tables, checklists, code blocks and diagrams, with an outline to jump between sections. This is the closest a .md file gets to behaving like a PDF or a Word document. More options in the Markdown viewers for Mac, compared.

4. VS Code or another code editor: free, but heavy

If you already use VS Code, open the file and press ⇧⌘V to see a rendered preview beside the text. It works well. It is also a programming tool, and a lot to install for reading a page of notes. See reading Markdown without VS Code.

Online Markdown previewers also work, but they mean pasting the contents of your file into someone else's website. Not a good habit for anything from work.

Make every .md file open in the same app

Changing it for one file is not what you want. You want every .md file to open the same way from now on.

  1. Select any .md file in Finder.
  2. Press ⌘I to open Get Info.
  3. Expand Open with and choose the app you want.
  4. Click Change All… and confirm. This is the step people miss: without it you have changed one file, not the file type, and the setting seems to come undone.

nicemd can do this for you from its settings with one button, so you skip the Finder steps.

Editing a .md file

Because Markdown is plain text, anything can edit it, TextEdit included. Make sure TextEdit is in plain-text mode (Format → Make Plain Text, or ⇧⌘T) so it does not save your file in another format and break it for every other tool.

The catch is that you are editing the symbols, not the document. An editor that hides the Markdown and shows the formatting, the way a word processor does, is easier if you did not choose Markdown in the first place. nicemd's editor works that way, and you can try it free for 3 days.

Sending it to someone who does not use Markdown

Do not send the .md file. Send a PDF if they only need to read it, or a Word document if they need to edit and comment. From anything that shows the formatted document, ⌘P → Save as PDF works. nicemd also has Copy as HTML, which lets you paste the formatted text into an email or Google Docs, and export to Word.

nicemd

nicemd is a Markdown viewer and editor for Mac. Double-click a .md file and it opens as a clean, formatted page, with an outline sidebar, tabs and themes. It adds Quick Look so Space shows the same page in Finder, and it keeps up when an AI tool rewrites the file while you read. Reading, Quick Look, Save as PDF and Copy as HTML are free; edit mode, split view and export to HTML and Word are a one-time unlock, with a free 3-day trial. Get it on the Mac App Store.

Questions

Can a Mac open .md files without installing anything?

Yes. TextEdit opens them, and so does any text editor. You will see the raw text with its symbols, not the formatted document. macOS has no built-in Markdown viewer.

Why does my .md file open in Xcode?

Xcode registers itself for plain-text files when it is installed, and Markdown counts as plain text. Use the Get Info → Change All… steps above to hand the file type to another app.

Is it safe to open a .md file?

A .md file is plain text and cannot run anything by itself. As with any file, be careful with links inside it.

How do I open a .md file on iPhone or Windows?

This guide is about the Mac. On Windows, Notepad opens it as plain text. On iPhone, the Files app shows the raw text too.

Next: what to do when Space still shows raw text.