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What is Glow?

Glow is a terminal-based markdown reader designed from the ground up to bring out the beauty—and power—of the CLI. It renders markdown files with beautiful styling directly in your terminal, making documentation reading a delightful experience.

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Why Use Glow?

Developers choose Glow because it:
  • Renders beautifully styled markdown directly in the terminal with syntax highlighting and formatting
  • Discovers markdown files automatically in subdirectories and Git repositories
  • Provides a powerful TUI (Text User Interface) for browsing and reading documentation
  • Works as a CLI tool for quick markdown rendering and piping
  • Integrates with GitHub and GitLab to fetch and render READMEs directly
  • Supports custom styling with built-in themes and custom JSON stylesheets
  • Works everywhere - macOS, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, and more

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Key Capabilities

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Terminal Markdown Rendering

Glow uses the Glamour rendering engine to display markdown with rich formatting, including:
  • Syntax highlighting for code blocks
  • Styled headings, lists, and quotes
  • Automatic color scheme detection (dark/light)
  • Custom word wrapping and width control

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TUI for Browsing

The interactive Text User Interface allows you to:
  • Browse local markdown files in the current directory
  • Search through Git repositories automatically
  • Use familiar pager-style navigation (similar to less)
  • View files with line numbers and mouse support

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CLI Mode

Use Glow as a command-line tool for:
  • Rendering markdown files to the terminal
  • Reading from stdin for pipeline integration
  • Fetching and displaying remote markdown files
  • Applying custom styles and formatting options

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GitHub/GitLab Integration

Glow can fetch and render README files directly from repositories: 
# Fetch and render a GitHub README
glow github.com/charmbracelet/glow

# Works with GitLab too
glow gitlab.com/user/project

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Quick Example

Here are some common ways to use Glow: 
# Launch the TUI to browse markdown files
glow

# Browse a specific directory
glow /path/to/docs

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Getting Started

Ready to get started? Head over to the Installation guide to install Glow on your system.
Run glow --help anytime to see all available options and commands.

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Learn More

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