Think cat, think Markdown and you’re set. mdcat renders the basic CommonMark syntax and highlights code blocks.
mdcat works best with iTerm2, WezTerm, and kitty, and a good terminal font with italic characters.
This is free and open source software.
Features include:
- Renders all basic CommonMark syntax (no tables or footnotes).
- Highlights code blocks with syntect,
- Shows links, and also images inline in supported terminals
- Adds jump marks for headings in iTerm2.
Website: thub.com/swsnr/mdcat
Support:
Developer: Sebastian W.
License: Mozilla Public License Version 2.0

mdcat is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Alternatives to cat | |
|---|---|
| bat | Super charged cat - Features in our Top 100 CLI Apps |
| mdcat | Sophisticated Markdown rendering for the terminal - Features in our Top 100 TUI Apps |
| grcat | Frontend for generic colouriser grc |
| tac | Concatenate and print files in reverse |
| ccat | Colorizing cat |
| see | Cute cat replacement |
| lolcat | Add some zest to the cat command. Features in our Linux Candy series |
| kat | cat command that almost tastes like chocolate |
| meow | Renders text using your existing Neovim configuration |
| mcat | Extended cat command |
| batdoc | cat for Office documents and PDFs |
| umber | Designed to replace cat for reading source code and other text files |
| rucat | Aimed at developers and system administrators |
| peek | Multi-buffer terminal pager |
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

