Install Glow Markdown Reader on Ubuntu 24.04

Glow is a lightweight command line application for rendering Markdown files directly in the terminal. It's especially useful for quickly previewing documentation, README files, or notes without needing a graphical editor. This tutorial explains how to install Glow markdown reader on Ubuntu 24.04.

Install Glow

First, fetch the most recent release number of Glow from its GitHub repository:

GLOW_VERSION=$(curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/charmbracelet/glow/releases/latest" | grep -Po '"tag_name": "v\K[0-9.]+')

Download the archive from releases page:

wget -qO glow.tar.gz https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow/releases/latest/download/glow_${GLOW_VERSION}_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz

Unpack the archive into a temporary directory:

mkdir glow-temp

tar xf glow.tar.gz --strip-components=1 -C glow-temp

Move the binary into /usr/local/bin:

sudo mv glow-temp/glow /usr/local/bin

Confirm the installation by checking the version of Glow:

glow --version

Clean up the leftover files:

rm -rf glow.tar.gz glow-temp

Testing Glow

To test Glow, you can render a remote Markdown file, such as the Glow project's own README:

glow github.com/charmbracelet/glow

Uninstall Glow

If you no longer need Glow, remove the binary:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/glow

Delete configuration and cache files:

rm -rf ~/.cache/glow ~/.config/glow