Graphoscope logo
GRAPHOSCOPE

A lens for your Markdown.

I built this tool because I needed it -
maybe you do too!

On the Mac App Store Why I built it
release-notes.md
[ screenshot 1 ]
Replace with images/hero.png
why-i-built-this.md

Why I built this

Hi 👋 - I'm Styves. I live in Markdown files. Notes, plans, docs, journals: everything I write ends up in a .md. And working with Claude every day generates mountains more of it.

I just wanted to read them. Fast. Beautifully. Double-click a file and it's there - no vault to set up, no editor to open, no preview pane to toggle. The tools I tried all wanted to be something bigger than a viewer. I wanted something smaller, and better at this one thing.

So I built it myself; way too many evenings and an unreasonable amount of care for tiny details nobody asked for.

The goal was simple: the best Markdown viewer in the whole damn world.

You'll be the judge of that. But it's made with love, I use it every single day, and maybe it's exactly what you've been missing too.

Fair question

Why not just use
Obsidian or VS Code?

Don't get me wrong - both are fantastic, and I use them every day.
They're just not built for this one little thing.

Obsidian

Obsidian only opens files that live inside your vault. But so much of my Markdown lives in project folders, scattered across everything I build with Claude.

I don't want to drag those files into my vault and pollute it - just to read them.

VS Code

VS Code opens any .md file just fine - but then it's another step to flip on the preview.

And firing up a whole code editor just to glance at a document? A little overkill.

So I made a lens, not a workshop.

Graphoscope is a lightweight, dedicated Markdown viewer. No vault to set up, no preview to toggle, no editor to boot. Double-click any .md file - anywhere on your disk - and it's instantly beautiful.

Just a viewer
obsessed with every detail

Navigation

Command palette

Press ⌘K and start typing. Every command, theme, setting and open file - all fuzzy-matched from one keystroke. No menu-hunting, ever.

Navigation

Live outline

An auto-built heading tree that follows you as you scroll, and jumps you anywhere in the document instantly.

Navigation

Advanced SSH support

Open, read and edit Markdown straight off a remote machine over SSH - and store your connections so a server's files are always one click away.

It browses and renders them just like the files on your own disk, even embedded or linked remote content.

Navigation

Pinned & ephemeral files

Pin documents to the top of the files sidebar for persistent quick access.

Files you just peek at land in an ephemeral list that clears itself out at the end of each day, so the sidebar never turns to clutter. (Yep - borrowed from Arc.)

Rendering

Wiki-links

[[Note]], [[Note#Heading]] and custom [[Note|labels]] wire your notes together - click through to any note, or straight to a section. Inside an Obsidian vault, every link resolves automagically from the vault root.

Rendering

Mermaid diagrams

Flowcharts, sequence and Gantt diagrams render live - and recolor themselves to match your active theme, so they never look pasted-in.

Rendering

Syntax highlighting

Beautiful code blocks with a one-click copy button and a color scheme that stays readable in light and dark themes alike.

Rendering

Frontmatter, handled

YAML properties render as a tidy, collapsible block at the top - data when you want it, tucked away when you don't.

Reading

20 full themes

The classics you love - Dracula, Tokyo Night, Nord and more - plus hand-crafted themes of my own, including two colorblind-safe ones. Each restyles the whole app.

Reading

Split view

Compare two documents side-by-side, vertically or horizontally - each pane scrolls and navigates on its own.

Reading

Zen mode

Focus on content. Full clutter free screen with just the content and spotlight the passage you point at - read long documents one calm bite at a time.

Reading

Image lightbox

Click any image to zoom and pan it in a full-window lightbox. Esc puts it right back where it was.

Editing & export

Live reload

The moment a file changes on disk, the view reloads itself - and a blinking dot lights up beside it in the sidebar so you always know exactly what just updated.

Editing & export

Copy as anything

Copy any section as plain text, Markdown, rich text or HTML - whatever the destination wants. It just pastes in clean.

Editing & export

PDF & HTML export

Turn any document into a polished, theme-styled PDF or a single self-contained HTML file you can send anywhere.

Editing & export

Live edit

Press ⌘E to edit right inside the rendered document - WYSIWYG. The line you're on shows its raw Markdown and re-renders the moment you leave.

Prefer the raw Markdown? ⇧⌘E flips to a source editor with live preview.

Power tools

Built by someone
who lives in Markdown

Every one of these exists because I wanted it for myself first.

For terminal people

A file browser that feels like home

Press ⌘O and you get a terminal-style opener on steroids. No Finder dialog, no mouse, no friction.

  • Type a path, auto-complete as you go, or browse the listing with the arrow keys
  • Save favorite locations for instant access - local and remote alike
  • And for the real shell: gscope file.md opens any file straight from your terminal
[ screenshot 5 ]
Replace with images/browser.png
Right beside your text

Tasks and links
at a glance

The inspector gathers your document's tasks and outgoing links - whichever the file has.

  • Every checkbox in one list - tick it here or in the document, and it saves to the file
  • All outgoing links gathered up
  • A click on a task's link icon scrolls straight to it in the document
[ screenshot 4 ]
Replace with images/panel.png
Edit in place

Edit it like
you read it

Hit ⌘E and edit the document right in place, in a WYSIWYG fashion.

  • The line you're on reveals its raw Markdown and re-renders the instant you leave
  • Tables go fully interactive: edit cells, add/remove rows & columns, resize, copy & paste blocks
  • Syntax-highlighted code as you type, drag-and-drop images, and inline ![[note]] embeds
[ screenshot ]
Replace with images/live-edit.png
FRIENDLY

Understands Obsidian

Graphoscope understands [[wiki-links]] the way Obsidian does, even if they are relative to the vault's root folder; resolving across your entire vault so you can jump between notes.

  • Aliases and heading targets: [[Note#Section|Label]]
  • Whole-vault resolution when a .obsidian folder is present
  • Support for embedded content rendering with ! preceding a link
[ screenshot 3 ]
Replace with images/wikilinks.png
20 themes

Dress it however you read best

Every theme restyles the whole UI and document rendering.

Graph-o-Brass
Night Owl
Dracula
Tokyo Night
Nord
Catppuccin Mocha
Ayu Mirage
One Dark
Rosé Pine
Monokai Pro
Midnight Blue
Dark Latte
Daylight
Warm Paper
Catppuccin Latte
Ayu Light
Tokyo Night Day
Noctis Lux

High-contrast themes for
Color Vision Deficiency

Lumberjack Chuck
Chuck's Birch Trees
The name

What's a graphoscope anyway?

A graphoscope is a Victorian parlor instrument: a folding wooden stand with a large magnifying lens, used to view photographs and documents in delicious detail. You'd slide a print behind the lens and suddenly it was bigger, sharper, easier to admire.

That felt like the right name for this app:
an instrument you point at a document to see it at its best.

An antique Victorian graphoscope

The best Markdown viewer
in the whole damn world.

That was the goal, anyway. You be the judge.

On the Mac App Store

macOS · Universal (Apple Silicon & Intel)