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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to leaf – a terminal Markdown previewer with a GUI-like experience

Terminal Markdown previewer — GUI-like experience. - RivoLink/leaf

Leaf is a terminal-based Markdown previewer that provides a GUI-like experience for developers. It allows users to preview Markdown files directly in the terminal with an interface that mimics graphical applications… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    Hi HN, This is a TUI app which displays interactive Markdown documents. Interactive in the sense that you can scroll code fences / tables / and click links. There's a Table of Contents extracted from the MD, and a very rudimentary browser like forward + back. I'm thinking it could be the starting point for a variety of hypertext like applications in the terminal. Very much a work in progress.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2
  3. 3

    Markdown Editor with instant preview using GitHub CSS.

    2022 · freecodetools.org · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Hi HN, Frogmouth is a TUI to display Markdown files. It does a passable job of displaying Markdown, with code blocks and tables. No image support as yet. It's very browser like, with navigation stack, history, and bookmarks. Works with both the mouse and keyboard. There are shortcuts for viewing README.md files and other Markdown on GitHub and GitLab. License is MIT. Let me know what you think...

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    Leaf▲81

    Author interactive coding tutorials

    2021 · getleaf.app · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    GUI disk analyzers are great for figuring out what's filling up your laptop/desktop drive. On containers or remote servers, the options are limited to purely text based utilities (e.g. du) or list-centric TUIs (e.g. ncdu) which are usually limited to viewing one directory at a time. I created leaves to fill that gap. Inspired by classic utilities like WinDirStat and KDirStat, it uses a 2-dimensional treemap^1 visualization to show the entire directory hierarchy with proportionally sized rectangles. It's performant enough to handle millions of files, thanks to Rust and multi-threading.…

    Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7LP

    Hi HN! For the last 8 months we've been working on leaflet.pub, a web app for making delightful documents. We're trying to strike a balance between Notion and Google Docs — very fast, ultralight and easy to share, but also supporting rich blocks and multiple pages. Weirdly, none of the many notetaking/document apps that we could find hit this combination, so we made Leaflet. With it you can: - Instantly create a doc, without an account - Share read and edit links - Sign-in with email to sync your docs to different devices - Add rich blocks, like canvases, subpages, rsvps, and polls It's…

    2025 · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Free-form board for visual note-taking.

    2021 · leaf-let.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    Marked QL▲159

    Instant markdown previews in Finder

    Jul 2026 · markedapp.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Rich is a Python library for rich text and beautiful formatting in the terminal. - Textualize/rich

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Convert text to markdown for LLMs like ChatGPT

    2025 · copyasmarkdown.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12
    Postleaf▲260

    Simple & beautiful open source blogging platform.

    2016 · its alternatives →

  13. 13
    Fig▲216

    Visual apps and shortcuts for your terminal

    2020 · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Ferrite: Fast Markdown/Text/Code editor in Rust with native Mermaid diagrams Built a Markdown editor using Rust + egui. v0.2.1 just dropped with major Mermaid improvements: → Native Mermaid diagrams - Flowcharts, sequence, state, ER, git graphs - pure Rust, no JS → Split view - Raw + rendered side-by-side with sync scrolling → Syntax highlighting - 40+ languages with large file optimization → JSON/YAML/TOML tree viewer - Structured editing with expand/collapse → Git integration - File tree shows modified/staged/untracked status Also: minimap, zen mode,…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15
  16. 16AD

    A simple and fast zero-dependencies-library to transform text-selections into serializable markings.

    2015 · bowlingx.github.io · its alternatives →

  17. 17
    showmd▲204

    Markdown was never meant to be previewed plain text

    Apr 2026 · showmd.yetanother.one · its alternatives →

  18. 18MD
  19. 19
    MarkTwo▲71

    A seamless, speedy, syncing markdown editor

    2020 · marktwo.app · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Rich-cli is a command line toolbox for fancy output in the terminal - Textualize/rich-cli

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Hi HN, I built a simple TUI for viewing and editing .md files in the terminal. More and more markdown files keep appearing in our projects, and I found myself needing a quick way to view(with syntax highlighting) and edit them without leaving the terminal, so I built this

    Apr 2026 · mdee.bkh.dev · its alternatives →

  22. 22
    Leaf PHP▲113

    Create clean, simple but powerful web apps and APIs quickly.

    2019 · leaf-docs.netlify.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Visual UI feedback for Claude Code, Cursor & Codex

    May 2026 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    A fully-modern text-based browser, rendering to TTY and browsers - browsh-org/browsh

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →