A MacDown alternative that still gets updates
MacDown earned its 9,800 stars, and its last release was January 2020. On 1 September 2026 Homebrew disabled its cask, and macOS has already started warning that Intel-only apps are running out of road. Glance is a maintained replacement that runs natively on Apple Silicon, previews in Finder, and lets you edit the rendered page.
Glance vs MacDown
GlanceWhat happened on 1 September
Homebrew disabled the macdown cask on 1 September 2026 because the app fails the Gatekeeper check, so brew install --cask macdown now stops with an error. The cask was pulling about seventeen thousand installs a year before the cutoff.
If what you want is MacDown itself, the community fork MacDown 3000 keeps it going: a universal, notarized build with a Quick Look extension, installed with brew install --cask macdown-3000. The rest of this page compares Glance with the original MacDown 0.7.3.
Glance is signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and stapled, which is the specific check MacDown fails. It updates itself in the background and installs the update when you next open it.
The preview pane, turned around
MacDown puts raw Markdown in the left half of the window and a preview in the right. You type ## Heading on one side and watch a heading appear on the other. It was a good design in 2014, and it settles which half you can touch: the rendered side only ever reflects the source, so every correction starts by finding the matching source line.
Glance starts from the rendered document and makes that the editable surface. Click a sentence and type, select two words for a formatting toolbar, click a table cell and Tab across the row. Type ## at the start of a line and it turns into a heading as you type it.
The source is there when you want it. ⌘\ opens it in a pane beside the page, the two scroll together, and you can type in either one, so a change on the left shows up on the right and the other way round. The difference from MacDown is which pane is live: in Glance, both are.
Read and edit Markdown natively
Free to read, Pro to edit · v0.2.2 · 9.8 MB · macOS 14+
The Finder preview the original MacDown never shipped
The original MacDown has no Quick Look extension, and people keep asking. The request is still open in its tracker, filed in March 2026: previewing a .md from Finder by hitting the space bar. The MacDown 3000 fork added one in April 2026.
Glance bundles its Quick Look extension and registers it the first time you open the app. Select any .md file in Finder, press Space, and the rendered document appears with tables, syntax-highlighted code, Mermaid diagrams, and LaTeX. Press Return to open it and start typing. Full steps are on the Finder preview guide.
Credit where it is due
MacDown was free, open source, and the default recommendation on the Mac for years, which is why nearly ten thousand people starred it and why its cask was still in heavy use when Homebrew disabled it. Glance is closed source and charges for editing, so if an auditable, free, open-source editor is the requirement, look at MarkEdit before you look here.
Related
New to Quick Look extensions? Start with Markdown Quick Look for macOS. Comparing others? See QLMarkdown, Marked, MarkEdit, Typora, and MarkText, or the roundup of Mac Markdown apps.
FAQ
Homebrew disabled MacDown's cask on 1 September 2026 because the app fails the Gatekeeper check, so brew install --cask macdown now stops with an error. The app itself last shipped a release in January 2020. If you want to stay with MacDown, the maintained MacDown 3000 fork installs with brew install --cask macdown-3000. If you want something different, Glance is signed and notarized by Apple and opens without a workaround.
No native build has ever shipped, so the original MacDown runs through Rosetta 2. A pull request adding universal support has been open since 2021 and a second attempt was closed unmerged in 2025. Apple has said Rosetta stays through macOS 27 and then narrows to certain older games, which puts a clock on it. A community fork, MacDown 3000, does ship a universal build if you want to stay with MacDown. Glance runs natively on Apple Silicon with no Rosetta in the way. It does need an Apple Silicon Mac, though — there's no Intel build.
For reading and correcting Markdown, yes, and it adds previewing in Finder, which the original MacDown never had. The split works the other way round: MacDown puts source on the left and a read-only preview on the right, while Glance shows the rendered document and opens the source beside it on Command-backslash, with both panes editable.
Yes. That request is still open in the original MacDown's tracker, though the MacDown 3000 fork added a Quick Look extension in April 2026. Glance bundles a Quick Look extension, so pressing Space on any .md file in Finder shows the rendered document with tables, code, Mermaid diagrams, and LaTeX math.
Reading is free forever, where MacDown was free and open source throughout. Editing the rendered page is Glance Pro, free for 14 days and then $9.99 once for up to three Macs.
Ready to glance?
Free to read, Pro to edit · v0.2.2 · 9.8 MB · macOS 14+
Notes
- Compared 13 October 2026 against the original MacDown 0.7.3, released January 2020, whose repository has 528 open issues, 51 open pull requests, and no commits since April 2021. MacDown is free and open source. A maintained community fork, MacDown 3000, ships a universal, notarized build with a Quick Look extension and its own Homebrew cask, macdown-3000. ↩
- Reading Glance is free with no account and no time limit. Editing is Glance Pro: free for 14 days, then a $9.99 one-time license covering up to three Macs. There is no subscription. ↩
- No native Apple Silicon build of the original MacDown has shipped, so it runs through Rosetta 2. A pull request adding universal support has been open since 2021, and a second attempt was closed unmerged in 2025. Apple has said Rosetta stays through macOS 27 and then narrows to certain older games. Glance is an Apple Silicon build and needs an Apple Silicon Mac: there is no Intel version, where MacDown runs on Intel natively. ↩
- Homebrew disabled the macdown cask on 1 September 2026 with the reason fails_gatekeeper_check. The original MacDown 0.7.3 download is unsigned. ↩
- Download sizes measured 13 October 2026: Glance 9.8 MB, MacDown 0.7.3 19.9 MB (MacDown.app.zip from the 0.7.3 release). Both figures are the download, not the installed footprint, which varies by machine. ↩