v0.1.4 · Pure Rust · No Electron · 100% local

A cross-platform markdown viewer in pure Rust

rumd renders your markdown live — in a clean reading view or side by side with its source — and refreshes automatically when the file changes on disk.

Download View source

Linux · macOS · Windows — a single native binary

rumd rendering a markdown document, dark theme

The pitch

Why rumd

No Electron. Really.

rumd is a single native binary built in pure Rust. No bundled browser, no runtime, none of the gigabytes.

Light as a viewer should be

A native egui app that starts fast and sips memory while it does its one job well.

Private by default

No accounts, no telemetry. Your documents never leave your machine.

Your edits are never overwritten

If the file changes on disk while you have unsaved edits, rumd asks. Reloading never clobbers your work.

Tested without a display

Headless UI tests run on every platform without a display server, so quality doesn't depend on someone clicking around.

Open it your way

Drag and drop, the file dialog, or straight from the shell: rumd README.md

Everything it does

Features

Rendered markdown

GFM tables, task lists, strikethrough, syntax-highlighted code blocks, clickable links, and local images resolved relative to the document — all in a centered reading column with tuned typography.

Split view

Rendered and source side by side. The source pane is always editable and the rendered pane follows as you type — save with Ctrl/Cmd+S. Unsaved changes show a • in the window title.

A collapsible sidebar lists every heading. Expand and collapse groups, click an entry to jump straight to it — and it stays open or closed the way you left it.

Search everywhere

Every visible occurrence highlighted in both views at once. Enter and Shift+Enter step through matches.

Dark & light

Follows your system theme by default; toggle any time with Ctrl/Cmd+D.

Zoom

Zoom in, out, and reset with the usual keys — and it persists.

It remembers

Theme, zoom, and view mode are restored the next time you open rumd.

Live reload

Refreshes automatically when the file changes on disk — degrades to manual refresh if the OS watch limit is hit.

Source done right

Line numbers and markdown highlighting. Files that aren't valid UTF-8 stay read-only, so rumd can never corrupt them.

See it in action

Screenshots

Rendered view in dark theme — Rendered view, dark theme — tables, task lists and syntax-highlighted code

Split view showing source and rendered panes — Split view — edit the source, watch the rendered pane follow

Rendered view in light theme — Light theme, for daylight hours

Search bar with highlighted matches — Search — every match highlighted in both views

At your fingertips

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl/Cmd+O`	Open file
`Ctrl/Cmd+S`	Save edits
`Ctrl/Cmd+E`	Cycle rendered/split/source
`Ctrl/Cmd+T`	Toggle the table of contents
`Ctrl/Cmd+D`	Toggle dark/light theme
`Ctrl/Cmd+F`	Search
`Enter` / `Shift+Enter`	Next / previous match
`Esc`	Close search
`Ctrl/Cmd+=` / `Ctrl/Cmd+-` / `Ctrl/Cmd+0`	Zoom in / out / reset
`Ctrl/Cmd+scroll` / pinch	Zoom in / out
`F5`	Reload from disk (asks first if there are unsaved edits)

Up and running

Install

On Linux, the recommended way to install rumd is the Flatpak bundle attached to every release — the latest is v0.1.4. Prefer a plain binary — or on macOS or Windows? Prebuilt archives are attached to every release too: unpack the archive for your platform and run rumd. No installer, no runtime, nothing to configure. Every archive ships with a .sha256 checksum.

Flatpak — recommended on Linux

Download the bundle from the latest release and install it with Flatpak. The first install pulls the org.freedesktop.Platform//26.08 runtime from Flathub automatically:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub \
  https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
wget https://github.com/dkijkuit/rumd/releases/download/v0.1.4/rumd-v0.1.4.flatpak
flatpak install --user rumd-v0.1.4.flatpak
flatpak run io.github.dkijkuit.rumd

Direct downloads

Linux x86_64 · .tar.gz macOS Apple Silicon · .tar.gz macOS Intel · .tar.gz Windows x86_64 · .zip

Linux (binary) The raw binary needs the usual X11/Wayland client libraries (libxkbcommon, libwayland-client, libX11) — most desktops already have them.

macOS The binary is unsigned: if Gatekeeper blocks it, run xattr -cr rumd once, or right-click → Open.

Windows SmartScreen may warn on first run — More info → Run anyway.

Looking for another version or the checksum files? See the release notes.

Prefer to build it yourself?

Build from source

rumd builds with a recent stable Rust toolchain (1.95 or newer). macOS and Windows need no extra prerequisites; on Linux install the X11/Wayland development libraries first:

sudo apt install libxkbcommon-dev libwayland-dev libx11-dev

Build

git clone https://github.com/dkijkuit/rumd.git
cd rumd
cargo build --release

The binary is at target/release/rumd — read a file with rumd README.md.

Flatpak

Build and install from source as a system-wide Flatpak (flatpak-builder and the org.freedesktop.Platform//26.08 runtime, SDK, and rust-stable extension are required):

flatpak install --system flathub \
  org.freedesktop.Platform//26.08 org.freedesktop.Sdk//26.08 \
  org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.rust-stable//26.08
flatpak-builder --install --system --force-clean build flatpak/io.github.dkijkuit.rumd.yml
flatpak run io.github.dkijkuit.rumd