How to View Markdown Files on iPhone — with LaTeX Math

Updated 2026-08-09

Markdown is everywhere — lecture notes, AI answers, README files, research drafts — but iOS treats .md as plain text: no headings, no tables, and formulas left as raw $x^2$ source. To read Markdown as it was meant to look, you need a viewer that renders it; if your notes contain math, you need one that renders LaTeX too — ideally without calling a CDN every time you open a file.

Here's the full workflow with OpenHTML, which renders Markdown and LaTeX entirely offline.

Open the file

Share the .md file to OpenHTML from Files, Mail, GitHub's app, or any chat or AI app.
Or use “Open from Files” to read it once from iCloud Drive without adding it to your library.
Or paste Markdown text straight in — copied AI answers become clean pages without saving a file first.

The document renders immediately: headings, GitHub-flavored tables, task lists, footnotes, and fenced code blocks with syntax highlighting.

Math that works in airplane mode

Formulas between $…$ (inline) or $$…$$ (display) — plus $…$ and \[…\] — render as real mathematical typography. The rendering happens once, at import, producing static HTML and MathML inside the page itself.

No network: nothing is fetched from a CDN, ever. Formulas look identical offline.
No scripts: the rendered page contains zero JavaScript — nothing to break, nothing to track you.
Fault isolation: a formula with a typo falls back to its source text, clearly marked; the rest of the page renders normally.

The full design is described on the Markdown + LaTeX feature page.

Reading comfort

Per-document text size — set it once for a dense paper, keep the default elsewhere.
Light and dark appearance following the system or your choice.
A source view with line numbers and search when you need the raw Markdown.
Find on page for long documents.

Keep, organize, export

Saved documents live in a private on-device library with favorites and recents; folders and tags (Pro) keep large collections sorted. Need to hand the result to someone who doesn't read Markdown? Export the rendered page — including the math — as a full-length PDF or long image (Pro).

Files never leave your device: no accounts, no analytics, no uploads. Optionally, Pro users can keep selected files in their own OpenHTML folder in iCloud Drive to read on their other devices.

How to View Markdown Files on iPhone — with LaTeX Math

Open the file

Math that works in airplane mode

Reading comfort

Keep, organize, export

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