Markdown was never meant to be previewed plain text
Ever asked yourself why all of those SKILL.md files are rendered in plain text in MacOS Preview? showmd is a free, native macOS Quick Look extension that renders Markdown beautifully. YAML frontmatter parsed into a collapsible metadata table — collapsed by default, one click to expand. No other viewer does this. Agentic AI XML tags — and 17 more — rendered as labeled, bordered blocks instead of raw angle brackets.
Hey PH! 👋
You might know me from Holdor (my first side project in years launched last month here on PH) — after that launch I dove deeper into developer tooling, and one daily frustration kept nagging me.
I work with Markdown files all day. CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, README.md — they're everywhere now. But every time I hit Space in Finder to Quick Look one, I'd get a wall of raw text. Hashes, dashes, angle brackets. Unreadable.
So I did some research. There are a few tools that handle basic Markdown formatting, sure. But none of them understand how Markdown is actually used today — especially in agentic AI workflows. YAML frontmatter? Rendered as noise. Custom XML tags like , , ? Just raw angle brackets.
That's the gap I built showmd for.
It's a free, native macOS Quick Look extension. Press Space on any .md file and get an instant, beautifully rendered preview — with frontmatter parsed into a collapsible metadata table, 20+ agentic AI XML tags styled as labeled blocks, syntax highlighting for 190+ languages, KaTeX math, Mermaid diagrams, and full GitHub Flavored Markdown support. All offline, all bundled, zero config.
Since launching so many side projects again is fun, I thought: let's group everything together under my new side project brand yetanother.one — which should indicate: yes, I have lots of ideas, and yes... those happen mostly at night.
Hope you like it! Let me know what I should build next? Spoiler: I'm currently working on something completely different — a new Android launcher.
About showmd on Product Hunt
“Markdown was never meant to be previewed plain text”
showmd launched on Product Hunt on April 13th, 2026 and earned 198 upvotes and 30 comments, placing #5 on the daily leaderboard. Ever asked yourself why all of those SKILL.md files are rendered in plain text in MacOS Preview? showmd is a free, native macOS Quick Look extension that renders Markdown beautifully. YAML frontmatter parsed into a collapsible metadata table — collapsed by default, one click to expand. No other viewer does this. Agentic AI XML tags — and 17 more — rendered as labeled, bordered blocks instead of raw angle brackets.
On the analytics side, showmd competes within Mac, Open Source, User Experience and GitHub — topics that collectively have 577.6k followers on Product Hunt. The dashboard above tracks how showmd performed against the three products that launched closest to it on the same day.
Who hunted showmd?
showmd was hunted by Johannes N. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
For a complete overview of showmd including community comment highlights and product details, visit the product overview.
Johannes N