Glow

Glow is an open-source, terminal-based markdown reader built by Charm, written in Go and released under the MIT License. It renders markdown directly in the command line with rich styling, making documentation and markdown files readable without leaving the terminal. The project has accumulated over 25,000 GitHub stars since its creation in November 2019.

What It Is

Glow is a CLI tool and textual user interface (TUI) for reading and browsing markdown files in the terminal. It belongs to the category of command-line document viewers, sitting alongside tools like bat and less but focused specifically on markdown rendering with visual polish. The core job is transforming raw markdown syntax into a styled, readable format directly in your shell — no browser or GUI required.

How It Works

Glow operates in two modes:

• TUI mode: Run glow without arguments to launch an interactive browser that discovers markdown files in the current directory, subdirectories, or the root of a local Git repository. Files open in a high-performance pager with familiar less-style keybindings.
• CLI mode: Pass a file path, stdin, a GitHub/GitLab repo URL, or any HTTP URL to render markdown directly. Supports word-wrap control (-w), pager output (-p), and custom styles (-s).

Glow uses the Glamour library for styling, which supports dark and light themes as well as custom JSON stylesheets. It auto-detects terminal background color to choose the appropriate theme automatically.

Installation and Platform Support

Glow is available across a wide range of platforms and package managers:

• macOS/Linux: Homebrew, MacPorts, Nix, Snap, Debian/Ubuntu APT, Fedora/RHEL YUM, Arch Linux pacman, Void Linux, Solus
• Windows: Chocolatey, Scoop, Winget
• Android: Termux
• FreeBSD/OpenBSD: pkg
• Go install: go install github.com/charmbracelet/glow/v2@latest (requires Go 1.21+)
• Pre-built binaries for macOS, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD — including ARM builds — are available on the GitHub releases page.

Configuration

Glow supports a glow.yml config file (opened via glow config) for persisting flags like style, pager mode, word-wrap width, mouse support, line numbers, and hidden file visibility. This avoids repeating flags on every invocation.

Update: v2.1.2

The latest release is v2.1.2, published on April 9, 2026. The repository was last pushed to on April 26, 2026, indicating active maintenance. The project is part of the broader Charm ecosystem of terminal UI tools and libraries.