Glow is a command-line markdown viewer created by charmbracelet, whose mission is simply to "make the command line glamorous" 🦄.

It renders markdown files in your terminal with proper formatting, syntax highlighting, and a clean reading experience. The difference with editing with a pure (decent) cli text editor like micro (see this previous article) is subtle but I like it.

Installation

Install Glow using snap:

sudo snap install glow

Alternatively, you can install it via other package managers depending on your system (including .deb).

Basic Usage

View a file

Simply pass the markdown file path to glow:

glow your-file.md

Set a maximum width

You can use the -w flag to set the maximum width (useful for wrapping long lines):

glow python-tips.md -w 60

Browse files

To list and browse available markdown files in the current directory, simply type:

glow

Display line numbers

You can show line numbers with the -l flag:

glow -l

Why use Glow?

If you frequently work with markdown documentation in the terminal, Glow improves the experience from reading plain text to viewing more beautifully formatted content. It's nice for:

• Reading documentation directly from the command line
• Browsing project README files
• Reviewing markdown notes created by agents
• Reviewing markdown files with tables
• Previewing blog content 🙂