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Quick start

Updated 2026-10-03

Install

Pick either form; both work offline (installers are on the download page, and also straight from the GitHub release):

Form How
Installer wizard install with a licence page; also the update path via About → check for updates
Portable zip unzip anywhere, double-click markdownaura.exe (the exe needs WebView2Loader.dll beside it)

Requires Windows 10 / 11 (x64) with the WebView2 Runtime — already present on Windows 11 and on Windows 10 with Edge, so nothing extra to download.

Open a folder

Click open folder in the sidebar (or ctrl shift O) and pick a directory. The tree lists Markdown files only (the md only switch is on by default); directories are always shown; dot-prefixed names plus node_modules, target and dist are ignored. The foot row shows watching N files — when a file changes on disk, open tabs re-render on their own.

A file-name filter sits at the foot of the sidebar, revealed on demand.

Three views

  • Preview: centred column reading, three widths (narrow 60ch / comfortable 100ch / full, cycled with ctrl shift M)
  • Split: source left, render right, draggable splitter, each pane keeps its own scroll
  • Source: read-only — no caret, no save; same type scale as the preview

The three buttons at the left of the toolbar switch views; F11 enters immersive mode and hides every piece of chrome.

Tabs and find

  • a single click in the tree opens a preview tab (italic); a double click pins it
  • ctrl W closes, ctrl tab next, ctrl 1-9 jump, ⋯ lists them all
  • ctrl F finds: match case, hit counter, next / previous

Session restore

Close it and open it again: tabs (preview tab included), scroll positions, the open folder, window geometry, theme, font size, zoom, reading width and both panel widths all come back. A file that is temporarily missing is struck through, not dropped.

The session lives in %APPDATA%\MarkdownAura\session.json, written atomically — a crash cannot lose the previous session.

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