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Markdown editors and tools, primarily for writers rather than hackers or developers.
What we look for in a Markdown editor. Different writers have different requirements; a hacker who wants notes with executable code is very different from a novelist who wants to keep a story flowing. Our own prejudices have dictated this list; we need tools that make it easy to write and keep track of writing, but we have little use for artificial intelligence in composing text. Thus we prize Markdown editors that make it easy to sit down and type.
Here are some of the things we look for:
☛The pointing finger marks our favorites in each category.
Most of these Web apps have a way of downloading a Markdown or rendered HTML file; with the very simplest ones, you can just copy either the Markdown or the rendered HTML and paste it into your word processor or content-management software.
Calmly Writer. Positioned as a distraction-free-word processor, Calmly Writer interprets basic Markdown code. It will hide the codes from you once it has interpreted them, showing only the rendered text. There is a paid version, with more features, for local installation, but the Web app has enough features to get real writing done. The typography is attractive.
Marcdown. An intentionally minimalist editor, but it includes a toolbar with basic formatting as well as a simple table constructor. Word and character counts. Drag a file from your file manager to Marcdown to view it (but you’ll have to save any changes as a separate or overwritten file). Last updated in 2023, but needs no updates as long as it works.
Markdown Editor Online. The most minimalistic appearance of all these editors, with no helps of any sort. It’s pleasingly clean. It does have buttons for downloading a file as either Markdown or HTML, and it uses your browser’s spelling checker.
Markdown Live Preview. A very simple side-by-side editor supporting basic Markdown syntax. It is a simple static site that can be downloaded and opened in any browser from the local disk.
Markdown Live View. Opens with the standard layout of editor on left, preview on right. The main gimmick is that you can edit on either side—in the Markdown code in the usual way and in the preview with a formatting toolbar, like a simple word processor.
Markon. Configurable themes, alerts, collapsible sections, supposedly intelligent preview resizing. No spelling checker.
☛Markpaste. Set apart by its good typography and its ability to export a perfectly formatted Microsoft Word document in DOC format. Side-by-side layout with formatting toolbar.
Markups. Side-by-side layout, with choice of editor only or preview only. File explorer with nested folders (all in browser storage). Configurable keyboard shortcuts; multiple themes; history. Writing goals, statistics, and other extras. No spelling checker.
markvim. Simple side-by-side Markdown editor whose gimmick is Vim keybindings.
MkDown. A capable Markdown editor with a dark theme. It includes formatting buttons so you don’t have to know Markdown code. No spelling checker.
SvelteMark. Simple side-by-side editor and preview. File explorer (all files in browser storage).
type. Positioned as a distraction-free “Zen editor for those who love simplicity.” Typographically well designed and therefore pleasant to work with for long periods. A “note” can be published as a Web page.
An interesting notion: the whole content of the document is compressed and encoded in the URL, so that a document can be shared or bookmarked without any online storage. Naturally these URLs are very long. But they can be hidden behind a link in an email message, and thus are a useful way to share a document.
☛Markdown Viewer. Standard layout of editor on left, preview on right. Extensive formatting toolbar, including table constructor. Word count, character count, reading time. Can generate a URL that points to the preview only, with the editor invisible.
Poe. In early development, so some quirks are apparent. Set apart by a powerful “transform” feature for many kinds of text manipulation. Configurable themes. Optional Vim keybindings.
textarea. Simple text editor, understands a subset of Markdown markup. Can generate a QR code for the URL that encodes the document.
☛Writebox. Extremely simple, but surprisingly powerful. Sync with Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Box. Font, colors, column width configurable. Preview button; no side-by-side preview. In spite of, or because of, its simplicity, this is one of the most useful tools on the list. It has been on line for many years, and it is still in active development.
StackEdit. If it were maintained, this would be by far the best choice on this list. It is beautifully designed, both in its user interface and in its typography. It has more capabilities than most other editors on this list. In theory it can sync with Google Drive, Dropbox, Github, and a host of others. Sync defaults to a Google Drive workspace, but avoid that and set up one in Github or Dropbox instead. The Google Drive workspace is accessible only to StackEdit; if the app stops working or the Google API changes, you could lose access to your files. Other sync options create folders accessible through your normal account, so you can just shrug if StackEdit stops working.
A good locally installed alternative to StackEdit is SoloMD.
Dillinger. Standard side-by-side editor and preview. Sync with GitHub, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Bitbucket. Actively maintained. No spelling checker.
Local file access works with Chromium-based browsers (Chromium, Chrome, Opera, Edge, Brave, and so on), but not with Firefox.
Cento. Positioned as a lightweight alternative to Obsidian. Once installed as a PWA, it registers itself as a handler for Markdown files, so it can be used to open a file from the local file system. It will also function as a notes program with a “vault” in the left pane, like Obsidian.
Grove. A very simple and typographically well-designed editor that opens a local folder as a workspace. In theory it can sync with a Dropbox folder, but that function was not working when we tried it (the app had exceeded its user limit for the Dropbox API).
Lepapier calls itself “the markdown editor with no distractions.” No formatting is shown in the editor—only exactly what you type, including the Markdown codes. A preview buttons shows the rendered text. A toolbar at the top has basic formatting options, including a table starter. Moving the mouse causes a sidebar to appear with options aimed at notetaking. “Please note that the app is unfinished,” says the author, but it works, and it uses your browser’s spelling checker.
Markdown WYSIWYG Editor. A busy and ugly interface, but it has the ability to edit both on the Markdown side and the “visual editor” side. Spelling checker in the visual editor only.
Simply Markdown Editor. Simple but well-designed Markdown editor with options for editor only (but the formatting is rendered along with the codes), WYSIWYG editor only, or side-by-side Markdown editor and preview. It can open a folder as a workspace. The whole program is in one self-contained HTML file, which you can download and then open in any Chromium-based browser. There are no dependencies, so it works without an Internet connection.
☛Typo. Side-by-side layout, with choice of editor only or preview only. Simple interface; character count, word count, reading time. The preview pane is typographically well designed, with a good readable column width.
We are arbitrarily limiting our list to programs that work on at least Linux and Windows, and preferably on all three major platforms—Linux, Windows, and Macintosh.
Feather MD. Speed is its gimmick, and Feather MD is indeed very fast, with a tiny footprint in memory. Side-by-side layout; multiple themes. No spelling checker; currently no Macintosh version.
Ferrite is still rapidly developing, so it still has too many bugs and quirks to recommend as a daily workhorse—but it’s worth watching. It is proudly 100% AI-coded; in the spirit of open source, the prompts given to Claude are published for us all to examine. Ferrite is very fast, and has a number of interesting and useful features. The format is a bit ugly; some of that is because the development is still in its early stages, but some is just the taste of the developers. No spelling checker yet; it’s on the roadmap for a future release.
MarkText. A WYSIWYG editor: the codes disappear into formatting as your write. You can toggle a source-code mode, however, if you need to deal with formatting that isn’t accessible in the WYSIWYG mode. A popular choice for a long time, MarkText was more or less abandoned for a few years, but has been revived by its original developer and a number of new contributors.
☛Obsidian is the titan in the Markdown world, a “personal knowledge base” and note-taking application with a jungle of third-party plugins that can turn it into practically anything you like. Obsidian itself is not open-source, though most of the plugins are. The program is free for any use; it hopes to make money by selling sync services and optional “commercial licenses.” Because Obsidian has been around for some years, and because it has a huge user base, it is polished in a way that few other programs on this list are. Although the program is proprietary, its files are plain Markdown in ordinary folders accessible to any other text editor. If you lost access to Obsidian tomorrow, your files would still be accessible.
If the fact that Obsidian is not open-source eats at you, a good alternative is Zettlr (see below), which is nearly as capable as a knowledge base and more capable as a writing environment.
☛SoloMD. So far this is the best lightweight desktop Markdown editor we have found. It is versatile without being overwhelming, and it is quick and snappy. It can open a folder as a workspace, or it can open a single Markdown file. It can show the Markdown codes, or just the rendered (but editable) formatting, or just the rendered preview; and it also has a “reading mode” that shows the rendered file in a pleasingly readable format. It can use the spelling checker for your computer’s default Web rendering engine, but it can also add the open-source Hunspell library if you like. Finally, it is stuffed with AI-friendly features, which we did not try out; it works just as well for writers who use their own brains.
☛Zettlr describes itself as “Your One-Stop Publication Workbench.” It’s especially aimed at academic writing, with built-in support for reference managers. It ships with its own captive Pandoc installation, so that your files can be exported in practically any format, including perfectly formatted Microsoft Word or LibreOffice files. As a knowledge-base or note-taking program, it’s the nearest competitor to Obsidian on this list, with a “snippets” system that can automate things like inserting metadata at the beginning of a file. Zettlr has been actively developed for several years and has a large user base, so that, although it is mostly the work of one very accessible and friendly developer, it has a degree of polish that nearly matches Obsidian’s. For writing long articles or books, it is probably the best choice you can make.