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mdpad

A lightweight, cross-platform markdown viewer with infinite-scroll rendering. Built with SDL3, SDL_ttf, and md4c.

mdpad opens a Markdown file and renders it as one continuous scrolling document, the way a reader expects, without the chrome of an editor. It starts fast, keeps memory low, and ships with its fonts and SDL libraries bundled so the Linux builds run on most distributions without extra packages.

Features

  • Infinite-scroll rendering of the whole document, no pagination.
  • Tabs for several files at once, with click, middle-click, and keyboard switching.
  • Text selection and copy by character, word, line, or the whole document.
  • Caret navigation with the arrow keys, word jumps, and document edges.
  • Syntax highlighting inside fenced code blocks.
  • Embedded HTML is rendered, not shown as raw tags: headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, blockquotes, <pre>, links, images, <kbd>, <mark>, colours, and centred <div> blocks.
  • Export to HTML for printing, themed to match what you see on screen.
  • Self-update with mdpad --update, pulling the latest release.
  • Single instance: opening a file hands it to the running window as a new tab instead of starting a second process.
  • Light and dark rendering themes.

Quick start

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/celray/mdpad/master/install.sh | sh
mdpad README.md

sudo apt install ./mdpad_1.1.1_amd64.deb
mdpad README.md

tar xzf mdpad-1.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd mdpad-1.1.1-linux-x86_64
./mdpad README.md

The one-line installer pulls the latest release and installs it into ~/.local with no root. Grab the downloads from the latest release, or read the installation guide for every option.

Where to next

  • Installation — packages, the portable tarball, and a no-root install.
  • Usage — opening files, tabs, selection, and HTML export.
  • Keybindings — the full shortcut reference.
  • Building from source — for other platforms and architectures.