A private markdown viewer for Brave that just works
Why raw markdown looks like a wall of text
A markdown file, the kind ending in .md, is plain text with a few formatting marks mixed in: # for a heading, **bold** for bold, - for a list item, and pipes and dashes for tables. Brave does not understand those marks on its own. Open a .md file in a fresh tab and Brave either downloads it or shows the raw text, symbols and all, as one long unformatted block. Nothing is broken. Brave simply has no built-in markdown viewer, so it shows you the source instead of the page the source describes.
A markdown viewer for Brave fixes that. It sits in the browser, notices when a page is markdown, and turns those marks into a formatted document: real headings, readable tables, highlighted code, working links. You open the file the way you always would, and it arrives as a clean page instead of a symbol soup.
Skim: a free, private markdown reader for Brave
Skim is a free, open-source extension that renders markdown automatically in Brave. Once it is installed, any .md file you open, whether it is a URL on the web, a README, or a local file on your own disk, opens as a formatted page. There is no button to press and no menu to find. Skim recognizes markdown and renders it for you.
It is MIT-licensed, so the source is public and anyone can read exactly what it does. Because Brave is built on Chromium, Skim installs straight from the Chrome Web Store, the same place any other Brave extension comes from. No separate store, no sideloading, no developer mode.
Why it fits Brave
People choose Brave to keep their browsing private, and a markdown viewer sitting in that browser should hold to the same standard. Skim does. It collects no data, runs no telemetry, and makes no network calls with your content. Everything renders on your device, whether the file came from the web or your own disk. There is no account to create and nothing to sign in to, and it works fully offline. The tool you add to read markdown does not quietly undo the reason you picked Brave in the first place.
How to add it to Brave
Setup takes about two minutes, and most of that is one privacy switch Brave asks you to flip.
- Open the Skim listing on the Chrome Web Store in Brave. Brave uses the same store, so the page loads normally.
- Click "Add to Brave", then confirm in the dialog. It installs like any other extension, with one click.
- Flip Brave's file-access switch. Brave hides local files from extensions by default, so to read
.mdfiles from your own disk it needs your permission once. Skim shows you exactly where to click, so you are not hunting through settings. - Open any
.mdfile from now on. It renders as a formatted page automatically, every time, with no extra steps.
If you only ever open markdown files on the web and never local ones, you can skip the file-access step entirely. That switch only matters for files stored on your own computer.
What Skim can do
A viewer is only as good as what it renders. Skim aims to handle the markdown people actually write, not a stripped-down subset:
- Live reload. Skim watches the file and re-renders it in place the moment it changes on disk. Leave an AI agent's plan open in a tab and watch it tick off tasks in real time, no manual refresh, with your scroll position kept.
- KaTeX math. LaTeX expressions render as real equations instead of raw backslashes and braces.
- Mermaid diagrams. Flowcharts and sequence diagrams written as code render as actual diagrams.
- GFM tables. GitHub-flavored markdown tables, task lists, footnotes, and syntax-highlighted code blocks all render correctly.
- Folder view. Browse a whole project of markdown files from a sidebar, free, with no Pro tier gating it.
- Copy as markdown. One click turns the rendered page back into clean markdown source, ready to paste into your next prompt or document.
- Private and on-device. Files never leave your machine. No account, no telemetry, no data collected, and it all works offline.
No install? Read it online instead
If you only need to read one file and would rather not add anything to Brave, there is a no-install option. The free online markdown viewer renders any .md file you drag onto the page, right in the browser, with nothing uploaded. It works on a work laptop, a phone, or a computer you do not own. For a file you will open once, that is genuinely the fastest route. For files that keep landing in your downloads folder, the extension is the better long-term fix, because after setup every file just works.
FAQ
Does Brave have a built-in markdown viewer?
No. Brave shows a .md file as raw text or downloads it, because it has no built-in way to render markdown. You need an extension like Skim, or an online viewer, to see it as a formatted page.
Can I install Skim on Brave?
Yes. Brave is built on Chromium and uses the Chrome Web Store, so you open the Skim listing there, click "Add to Brave", and confirm. The same extension that runs on Chrome runs on Brave.
Is the Skim markdown viewer free?
Yes. Skim is MIT open source and completely free, with no Pro tier, no paywall, and no account. Features that some other viewers charge for, like folder browsing, are free in Skim.
Does Skim respect Brave's privacy focus?
Yes. Skim collects no data, runs no telemetry, and makes no network calls with your content. Everything renders on your device and it works fully offline, which lines up with why people choose Brave.
Can it read local .md files on Brave?
Yes. After you flip Brave's "Allow access to file URLs" switch, which Skim walks you through once, it renders local .md files exactly like ones on the web. Nothing is uploaded.