How to open an .md file on Linux

Short answer

Most Linux desktops open an .md file in a plain text editor (GNOME Text Editor on Ubuntu), so you see the raw text: # in front of the titles and ** around words.

For a formatted view, run glow file.md in a terminal, install Apostrophe from Flathub on GNOME, or switch on the Document Preview plugin in Kate on KDE.

What an .md file is

A file ending in .md is a Markdown file: plain text with a few symbols that stand in for formatting. A line starting with # is a heading, **word** means bold, and a line starting with - is a bullet point. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini format their answers this way, so downloads and exports from them often arrive as .md files. Nothing is wrong with yours.

In the terminal: glow

glow renders Markdown right in your terminal, headings and all. If you live in a terminal anyway, it’s the fastest way to read one file.

sudo snap install glow     # Ubuntu and other snap systems
sudo pacman -S glow        # Arch
brew install glow          # Homebrew on Linux

glow file.md

On Debian or Ubuntu without snap, glow’s apt package comes from Charm’s own repository, so follow the setup steps in glow’s README first. Fedora gets a yum repository the same way.

On GNOME: Apostrophe

GNOME Text Editor colors Markdown but never shows it formatted. Apostrophe is a free GNOME writing app with a formatted preview, and it’s on Flathub:

flatpak install flathub org.gnome.gitlab.somas.Apostrophe

On KDE: Kate or ghostwriter

Kate can preview Markdown with a built-in plugin. It’s called Document Preview, not “Markdown preview,” which is why people miss it.

Open Settings > Configure Kate, find the Plugins page, and tick Document Preview.
Open the .md file, then choose View > Tool Views > Show Preview.
If the preview pane stays blank, install your distribution’s markdownpart package, which is what draws it.

For a dedicated app, KDE’s ghostwriter shows a live preview next to your text.

Anywhere: VS Code or Obsidian

In VS Code, open the file and press Ctrl+Shift+V for a formatted preview, or Ctrl+K then V to see it side by side with the raw text. Obsidian is free on Linux as an AppImage, Snap, or .deb, with a community Flatpak too. It wants a vault (a folder of notes) set up first, which is overkill for a single file.

Italics for Linux is coming soon

Italics opens .md files as clean documents you can read and edit like Word, with no symbols at any point. It runs on Windows today, and Linux is on the way.

See how Italics works