Tinta

Markdown, distilled.

A fast, lightweight Markdown and Mermaid viewer for Windows

Tinta is a fast, lightweight Markdown and Mermaid viewer for Windows, built with Direct2D and DirectWrite for hardware-accelerated rendering. A single native executable under 1 MB that opens instantly — no Electron, no web engine, no installer.

Download

Grab the latest release — a single portable tinta.exe, no installation required. Run it and open a Markdown or Mermaid file.

Or install from the Microsoft Store (automatic updates, Store-signed):

winget install "Tinta Markdown Viewer" -s msstore

Or install with Scoop:

scoop bucket add tinta https://github.com/oipoistar/scoop-bucket
scoop install tinta

Why Tinta?

Most markdown apps ship an entire browser to render text. Tinta uses the GPU-accelerated text stack already built into Windows:

	Tinta	Typora	Obsidian	VS Code
Startup	~200 ms	~1.5 s	~3 s	~2 s
Install size	< 1 MB	~90 MB	~250 MB	~350 MB
Runtime	Native Direct2D	Electron	Electron	Electron

It's a viewer first: perfect as the double-click default for .md and .mmd files, for reading documentation and diagrams — with an edit mode when you need it.

Features

• Lightning-fast startup - Direct2D rendering, no web engine overhead
• 10 beautiful themes - 5 light and 5 dark themes to choose from
• Hardware-accelerated - Smooth text rendering via DirectWrite
• Word wrap - Optional soft wrap in the editor (Ctrl+W)
• Focused editing - Hide the preview pane while writing (Ctrl+P)
• Native Mermaid flowcharts - Render .mmd files and fenced mermaid blocks without a web engine
• Rich tables - Tables with bold, italic, code, and clickable links in cells
• Folder browser - Press B to browse and open Markdown or Mermaid files
• Table of contents - Press Tab to see document headings, click to jump
• Edit mode - Press : to edit markdown with live preview, search works in editor too
• Search - Find text with F or Ctrl+F, cycle through matches with Enter
• Persistent settings - Remembers your theme, zoom level, and window position
• Text selection & copy - Select text and copy to clipboard
• Zoom support - Ctrl+scroll to zoom in/out
• Drag & drop - Drop any Markdown or Mermaid file to view it
• Minimal footprint - Small binary, minimal dependencies

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
B	Toggle folder browser
Tab	Toggle table of contents
F / Ctrl+F	Open search
Enter	Next search match
ESC	Close overlay / Quit
T	Open theme chooser
S	Toggle stats overlay
Ctrl+C	Copy selected text (or all if none selected)
Ctrl+A	Select all text
Ctrl+Scroll	Zoom in/out
Arrow keys / J/K	Scroll
Page Up/Down	Page scroll
Home/End	Jump to start/end
:	Enter edit mode
ESC ESC	Exit edit mode
Ctrl+S	Save (in edit mode)
Ctrl+P	Show/hide preview pane (in edit mode)
Ctrl+W	Toggle word wrap (in edit mode)
Q	Quit

Building

Requires Windows with Visual Studio 2019+ and CMake 3.15+.

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build . --config Release

The executable will be at build/Release/tinta.exe.

Usage

# Open a Markdown file
tinta.exe document.md

# Open a Mermaid flowchart
tinta.exe diagram.mmd

# Open with light theme
tinta.exe -l document.md

# Show stats on startup
tinta.exe -s document.md

# Register for Markdown and Mermaid files
tinta.exe /register

Or simply drag and drop a .md or .mmd file onto the window.

File Association

On first launch, Tinta will ask if you want to set it as the default viewer for Markdown and Mermaid files. If you choose "No", you won't be asked again.

To register Tinta as the default viewer later, run:

tinta.exe /register

This registers .md, .markdown, and .mmd so you can select Tinta as their default app in Windows Settings.

Mermaid Support

Tinta natively renders Mermaid flowchart and graph diagrams in .mmd files and fenced mermaid code blocks. It supports TB/TD, BT, LR, and RL layouts; common node shapes; directed and labeled edges; classDef, class, and style styling. Unsupported Mermaid diagram families fall back to readable source code.

Themes

Press T to open the theme chooser:

Light Themes:

• Paper - Warm sepia, literary feel
• Sakura - Soft pink elegance
• Arctic - Cool blue-white
• Meadow - Fresh green
• Dusk - Warm gray twilight

Dark Themes:

• Midnight - Deep blue-black
• Dracula - Purple-tinted dark
• Forest - Deep green
• Ember - Warm charcoal
• Abyss - Pure black (OLED-friendly)

Dependencies

• MD4C - Fast markdown parser (fetched automatically by CMake)
• Windows Direct2D/DirectWrite (system libraries)

License

MIT