## Native
A Native macOS Markdown App
No Electron. No Chromium. No bloat.
ShowMeMyMD is built with SwiftUI, Apple’s native framework. It’s a real Mac app — not a web page wrapped in a browser engine.
## Why Native
Why native matters
Launch speed
ShowMeMyMD opens instantly. No Electron bootstrap, no V8 initialization, no waiting for a Chromium process to spin up. Click a .md file and it’s rendered before you finish lifting your finger off the trackpad.
Memory
ShowMeMyMD uses a fraction of what Electron apps consume. Your RAM is for your work — your compiler, your browser tabs, your Docker containers — not your Markdown viewer.
Battery
Native apps use less power. Read documentation on a plane, at a coffee shop, or on your couch without draining your battery on a bundled browser engine that’s doing nothing but rendering text.
macOS integration
ShowMeMyMD follows your system appearance — dark mode and light mode switch automatically. It respects Accessibility settings, supports macOS Services, and integrates with Finder via Open With and Quick Actions. It behaves like a Mac app because it is one.
Apple Silicon
Runs natively on M-series chips. No Rosetta translation layer. Maximum performance with minimum power draw on M1, M2, M3, and M4 Macs.
## The Elephant
The Electron problem
Electron apps are essentially running a web browser. Every Electron app ships its own copy of Chromium — the same rendering engine that powers Google Chrome. That’s hundreds of megabytes of overhead before the app does anything.
Typora, VS Code, Obsidian, and many other Markdown tools use Electron. They work. Some of them work very well. But they carry the weight of a full browser engine to display what is, ultimately, formatted text.
For a full IDE like VS Code, the tradeoff makes sense — you’re getting an extensible platform with thousands of plugins. But for a Markdown viewer? It’s overkill. You don’t need a browser engine to render headings, lists, and code blocks.
ShowMeMyMD takes the opposite approach. It uses Apple’s native UI framework to render Markdown directly — no browser, no translation layer, no overhead.
## SwiftUI
Built with SwiftUI
SwiftUI is Apple’s modern declarative UI framework — the same technology behind Apple’s own apps. It’s designed for macOS from the ground up, not adapted from the web.
That means automatic support for Dynamic Type, VoiceOver, reduced motion preferences, and every other macOS accessibility feature. These aren’t bolt-on additions — they’re built into the framework.
The result is an app that feels right on macOS. Proper window management, native keyboard shortcuts, correct scrolling behavior, and a UI that respects your system preferences without any configuration.
## Numbers
Native vs Electron, by the numbers
App Size
~15MB
ShowMeMyMD
200MB+
Typical Electron app
Cold Launch
<1 second
ShowMeMyMD
2–5 seconds
Typical Electron app
Idle RAM
~30MB
ShowMeMyMD
200MB+
Typical Electron app
Apple Silicon
Native
ShowMeMyMD
Varies
Typical Electron app
A Markdown viewer that respects your Mac
One-time purchase. No subscription. No account. No telemetry.
Download on theMac App Store$2.99 · macOS 14+
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