Advanced Usage

Open a File in MacDown from Terminal

MacDown ships with a utility at MacDown.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/macdown. You can use this to launch MacDown straight from the Terminal. I use the following Bash function to access it:

macdown() {
    "$(mdfind kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier=com.uranusjr.macdown | head -n1)/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/macdown" $@
}

Note: You need to first launch MacDown at least once for this command to work. This registers com.uranusjr.macdown to OS X so that mdfind recognises MacDown by that identifier.

You don't need this Bash function if you install MacDown via Homebrew (which creates a soft link for you).

Open files with MacDown:

$ macdown file.md

will open file.md if it exists, or create a new document with that name if it does not.

You can also open more than one document this way:

$ macdown file.md another_file.md yet_another_file.md

Alternatively, you can use open -b com.uranusjr.macdown file.md or open -a MacDown file.md. Using the open command will not launch MacDown if the specified file does not exist, and therefore also won't create an empty document in this case.