A fast, lightweight, cross-platform Markdown viewer built with Rust and Tauri v2.
Whisk is a read-only Markdown previewer — it opens .md files, renders them beautifully, and auto-reloads on save. Write Markdown in your preferred editor; Whisk handles the preview.
- CommonMark + GFM — Full CommonMark 0.31.2 compliance with GitHub Flavored Markdown extensions (tables, strikethrough, autolinks, task lists, footnotes)
- Syntax Highlighting — Rust-native highlighting via syntect for fenced code blocks
- Mermaid Diagrams — Fenced
mermaidcode blocks render as interactive diagrams - Theming — Three built-in themes (Light, Dark, GitHub) with custom theme support
- Auto-Reload — File watcher detects saves and updates the preview with scroll preservation
- Metadata Bar — Word count, character count, and estimated reading time
- Keyboard Shortcuts — Open file, cycle themes, open in editor, toggle metadata
- Drag & Drop — Drop Markdown files onto the window to preview
- CLI Support —
whisk path/to/file.mdopens directly - Cross-Platform — macOS, Linux, and Windows via Tauri v2
- Rust (1.77.2+)
- Node.js or Bun
- Platform-specific Tauri dependencies — see Tauri Prerequisites
# Run in development mode with hot reload
bun x @tauri-apps/cli dev
# Build for production
bun x @tauri-apps/cli build# Open a file from the command line
whisk README.md
# Or launch and use File → Open (Cmd/Ctrl+O)| Action | macOS | Windows/Linux |
|---|---|---|
| Open file | Cmd+O | Ctrl+O |
| Open in editor | Cmd+E | Ctrl+E |
| Cycle theme | Cmd+T | Ctrl+T |
| Toggle metadata | Cmd+I | Ctrl+I |
| Print / Export PDF | Cmd+P | Ctrl+P |
Place .css files in the themes directory:
- macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/whisk/themes/ - Linux:
~/.config/whisk/themes/ - Windows:
%APPDATA%/whisk/themes/
Custom themes appear automatically in the theme selector. See src-tauri/themes/light.css for the CSS contract.
MIT