Git-diff overlay — see what changed without leaving the doc
Toggle a heatmap of recent edits over the rendered markdown. Pro feature for reviewing what your tools, collaborators, or AI agents changed.
Last updated
The git-diff overlay paints a subtle heatmap over the rendered markdown showing which paragraphs are added, modified, or deleted since the last commit. It’s not a separate diff view — the whole document stays exactly as you’d read it, with colored bars in the margin and changed text highlighted in place.
Toggle with Ctrl+Shift+D.
What it shows
- Green bar in the margin + green tint — paragraphs added since the comparison base (default: HEAD).
- Orange bar + orange tint — paragraphs modified.
- Red strikethrough — paragraphs deleted, shown inline at their former position.
- No bar / no tint — unchanged.
The rendering uses the standard markdown render plus a delta layer. Code blocks, math, Mermaid, and tables all show change indicators in their margin. Toggling the overlay off (Ctrl+Shift+D again) restores the clean view immediately.
Picking a comparison base
By default the overlay diffs against HEAD — i.e. “what’s changed since the last commit?” Click the diff status indicator in the top-right corner of the document to pick a different base:
- HEAD — default, since last commit
- HEAD~1 — one commit back
- A specific commit hash — type or paste
- A branch name — e.g.
mainto see what’s changed on this branch - The last viewed snapshot — see what’s changed since you last opened this file in MD View
Use cases
Review what an AI agent changed
You ran Claude Code with “rewrite this RFC’s Background section using shorter sentences.” Open the file, hit Ctrl+Shift+D, and the changed paragraphs glow orange. Read in flow — no separate diff window.
Review your own commit
Before pushing, open the file you’ve been editing, Ctrl+Shift+D. Read the changes in context. Catch the awkward sentence you didn’t notice while typing.
Review someone else’s PR
Pull the branch, open the file, set the base to main. See what
they changed in the document — not as patches, but as the new
version with the changes highlighted.
Bisect documentation regressions
When did the API description go sideways? Set the base to a commit hash from a release tag, scroll to the relevant section, read the version diff in context.
Limits
- Requires a git repo. The file has to be tracked. The overlay
shells out to
git diff— outside a repo it’s just unavailable (the toggle is greyed out). - Untracked changes show against the working tree. If the file has unstaged edits, the overlay shows them as “added since HEAD” — which is the right answer.
- Binary content in inline images isn’t diffed; the image is treated as unchanged unless its filename changed.
Comparison
| App | Diff overlay on rendered MD | Heatmap | Pick base commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| MD View Pro | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| VS Code (timeline) | No (line-diff view only) | No | n/a |
| GitHub PR view | Yes (web, line-diff) | No | PR base |
| Gitlens (VS Code extension) | Inline gutter on source | No | n/a |
See also
- Split view — when you’d rather see two whole files than a single file with a diff overlay.
- Verification — fabricated paths, broken anchors, risky shell, and dense claims.
- Pricing — $24 lifetime for Pro.