Marky: a tiny, terminal-first Markdown viewer for macOS that reloads while you code

Overview

A new macOS app called Marky promises fast, beautiful Markdown previews with a tiny footprint. Built with Tauri v2, React and markdown-it, it’s designed to be launched from the terminal — marky README.md opens a window, marky ./docs/ opens a folder as a persistent workspace. It renders tables, code blocks (Shiki with VS Code themes), task lists, math (KaTeX), and mermaid diagrams, and it watches files so edits from your editor — or an agent like Claude — show up instantly. Delightful? Yes. Magic? Close.

It has been reported that the distributed .dmg is under 15 MB and that the app is currently unsigned while awaiting Apple developer review, so early Homebrew installs may require a workaround. The project pairs a Rust backend (CLI, file I/O, watchers, fuzzy search) with a React + TypeScript frontend, and the README emphasizes safe rendering via DOMPurify — safe enough to drop in untrusted markdown without holding your breath.

Why it matters

Why should you care? Because the market has been flooded with heavy Electron apps and feature-bloated editors. Marky leans the other way: tiny, native webview, CLI-first, and workspace persistence like Obsidian but without the kitchen sink. Want to watch AI-generated plans unfold in real time? That live-reload UX is the emotional hook — seeing a draft auto-render as an agent writes it feels... cathartic.

Roadmap items include x86 and Linux builds, a built-in AI chat to talk to Claude Code or Codex inside documents, and git-diff review tools. The project is open source, built to be forked and extended — and if you like fast tools that get out of your way, Marky is worth a spin.

Sources: github.com/grvydev, Hacker News