Skip to content

Markdown Preview plugin

A live, side-by-side preview of the active Markdown document, rendered in a dockable panel that updates as you type. The renderer is dependency-free (it uses Qt's built-in rich-text view, not a web engine), so this plugin is always available and adds no heavy dependencies.

Where to find it

View ▸ Markdown Preview opens (or closes) the preview dock for the current tab. The dock prefers the right-hand side and can be dragged, floated, or tabbed like any other panel.

How it behaves

  • Live render. The preview re-renders as you type, debounced so typing stays responsive (the debounce relaxes automatically for very large files).
  • Follow the caret. With Follow caret enabled (toolbar), the preview scrolls to keep the block you're editing in view. Toggle it off to scroll the preview independently. The setting is remembered.
  • Theme-aware. Preview colours come from the active editor theme (text, code blocks, block quotes, links), so the preview matches a light or dark theme and updates live when you change themes. You can fine-tune these colours in the Theme Editor under the Markdown categories.
  • Export / open in browser. The toolbar can export the rendered HTML to a file or open it in your default browser. Exported HTML uses a fixed light stylesheet so the shared file reads normally regardless of your editor theme.

Preview visibility

Preview visibility is remembered per file, both during a session and across restarts:

  • Markdown files (.md, .markdown, .mdown, .mkd, .mkdn, .mdwn, .markdn, .mdtxt) open the preview automatically the first time you view them. This "auto-open" default is a persistent toggle under View ▸ Auto-open Markdown Preview.
  • Other files don't — but you can open the preview on any file with View ▸ Markdown Preview, and it will render that file as Markdown.
  • Within a session, whatever you choose for a tab is restored when you switch back to it.
  • Across restarts, your explicit choice for a file is remembered: close the preview on a file and it stays closed the next time you open that file; open the preview on a file that wouldn't auto-open and it reopens. Files you never explicitly touched simply follow the auto-open default each time — so turning auto-open on later still opens previews you never deliberately closed.

What it renders

Headings, bold / italic, inline code and fenced code blocks, ordered and unordered lists, block quotes, horizontal rules, links, images (resolved relative to the file), autolinks, and hard line breaks. Text is HTML-escaped and raw embedded HTML is not executed, so previewing a document never runs arbitrary markup.

See also

  • HTML Preview — full-fidelity preview (CSS/JavaScript) for HTML and PHP, using QtWebEngine.
  • Theme Editor — adjust the preview's Markdown colours.