MD Browser
Browse your Markdown documentation like a website — right inside VS Code.
Open any .md file, click links to jump from page to page, and use Back and Forward to retrace your steps, just like in a web browser. Ideal for project docs, wikis, runbooks and knowledge bases stored as Markdown in your repository.
Features
- Follow links between files — relative links to other Markdown files open in the same panel, including anchors (
guide.md#installation).
- Back / Forward history — toolbar buttons, keyboard shortcuts and mouse side buttons. Your scroll position is restored when you go back to a page.
- History menu — jump directly to any page you've already visited.
- Home button — return to the page you started from.
- Markdown Files view — a dedicated Activity Bar view lists every Markdown file in your workspace as a tree (folders first, README on top). Click a file to open it in the browser.
- Native rendering — uses VS Code's built-in Markdown engine and styles, so pages look exactly like the regular preview and follow your light or dark theme.
- Smart link resolution
- Links without an extension:
guide → guide.md
- Links to a folder → its
README.md or index.md
- Paths starting with
/ resolve from the workspace folder root
- External links (
https://…, mailto:) open in your default browser
- Other files (code, images, PDFs…) open in the editor beside the browser
- Live reload — the page refreshes automatically when the file changes on disk.
- Edit button — opens the source file side by side.
Getting started
There are several ways to open a file in MD Browser:
- Click the MD Browser icon in the Activity Bar and pick a file from the Markdown Files view.
- Right-click a Markdown file in the Explorer → Open in MD Browser.
- Click the MD Browser icon in the editor title bar of an open Markdown file.
- Run MD Browser: Open in MD Browser from the Command Palette to pick from all Markdown files in the workspace.
Keyboard shortcuts
Active when the MD Browser panel has focus.
| Action |
macOS |
Windows / Linux |
| Back |
⌃- or ⌘[ |
Alt+← or Ctrl+[ |
| Forward |
⌃⇧- or ⌘] |
Alt+→ or Ctrl+] |
Mouse back and forward side buttons also work.
Commands
| Command |
Description |
MD Browser: Open in MD Browser |
Open the current or selected Markdown file |
MD Browser: Back |
Go to the previous page in history |
MD Browser: Forward |
Go to the next page in history |
Requirements
VS Code 1.85 or later. No other dependencies — the extension uses the Markdown support built into VS Code.
Localization
The extension's commands and views are available in English and French and follow VS Code's display language.
Author
Created by Martin Nantel.
