@oakoliver/glow

Terminal markdown reader — zero-dependency TypeScript port of Charmbracelet's Glow.

Render markdown files beautifully in the terminal, with a full interactive TUI for browsing and filtering markdown files in a directory.

Install

npm install -g @oakoliver/glow

Or use as a project dependency:

npm install @oakoliver/glow

CLI Usage

# Render a markdown file
glow README.md

# Render from stdin
cat README.md | glow -

# Render from a URL
glow https://raw.githubusercontent.com/charmbracelet/glow/master/README.md

# Render from a GitHub repo
glow github://charmbracelet/glow

# Render from a GitLab repo
glow gitlab://caarlos0/test

# Launch the interactive TUI in the current directory
glow

# Launch the TUI in a specific directory
glow ./docs

# Use a specific style
glow -s dark README.md

# Set word-wrap width
glow -w 80 README.md

# Pipe through a pager
glow -p README.md

# Edit the config file
glow config

Flags

Flag	Short	Description
--style	-s	Style name or JSON path (default "auto")
--width	-w	Word-wrap at width (0 to disable)
--pager	-p	Display with system pager
--tui	-t	Display with TUI
--all	-a	Show system files and directories (TUI only)
--line-numbers	-l	Show line numbers (TUI only)
--preserve-new-lines	-n	Preserve newlines in the output
--mouse	-m	Enable mouse wheel (TUI only)
--config		Config file path
--help	-h	Help
--version	-v	Version

Available Styles

• auto (default) — automatically detects dark/light terminal
• dark — dark theme
• light — light theme
• pink — pink theme
• dracula — Dracula color scheme
• tokyo-night — Tokyo Night color scheme
• notty — plain output for non-TTY contexts

You can also pass a path to a custom JSON style file.

TUI Keybindings

Key	Action
Enter	Open document
Esc / h / Backspace	Go back
/	Filter files
q	Quit
r	Refresh files
c	Copy to clipboard
e	Open in editor
?	Toggle help
j / k / Arrow keys	Navigate
g / G	Go to top / bottom
Ctrl+D / Ctrl+U	Half page down / up

Library Usage

import {
  NewProgram,
  StashModel,
  PagerModel,
  defaultConfig,
  removeFrontmatter,
  isMarkdownFile,
  glamourStyle,
} from '@oakoliver/glow';

// Create a config
const cfg = defaultConfig();
cfg.path = './docs';

// Launch the TUI programmatically
const program = NewProgram(
  cfg,
  () => new StashModel(cfg),
  () => new PagerModel(cfg),
);
await program.run();

Configuration

Glow reads its configuration from ~/.config/glow/glow.yml (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/glow/glow.yml).

# style name or JSON path (default "auto")
style: "auto"
# mouse support (TUI-mode only)
mouse: false
# use pager to display markdown
pager: false
# word-wrap at width
width: 80
# show all files, including hidden and ignored
all: false

Run glow config to open the config file in your editor.

Part of the Charm Ecosystem Port

This package is part of a complete TypeScript port of the Charmbracelet terminal UI ecosystem:

Package	npm	Description
@oakoliver/lipgloss	@oakoliver/lipgloss	Terminal styling
@oakoliver/glamour	@oakoliver/glamour	Markdown rendering
@oakoliver/bubbletea	@oakoliver/bubbletea	TUI framework (Elm architecture)
@oakoliver/bubbles	@oakoliver/bubbles	TUI components
@oakoliver/glow	@oakoliver/glow	Terminal markdown reader

All packages are zero-dependency, pure TypeScript implementations.

License

MIT - see LICENSE for details.

Original Go implementation by Charmbracelet, licensed under MIT.