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Slant community chat on DiscordMarkdown is a plain text formatting syntax for web writers that is easy to read, easy to write and designed to be eventually converted to rich text while remaining independent from any application.
Things to look for when choosing a Markdown editor include how it makes writing Markdown easier, how it previews rendered Markdown, how much customizability and options both in term of the editor as well as output are available and if it supports a Markdown flavor you like.
| 34 Recommended Products | Recommendations | Platforms | Export | Preview |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 StackEdit· · · | 45 | 2 | MacOS, Linux, Windows | Text, HTML, PDF | Live Preview |
| #2 Ulysses III· · · | 58 | 3 | MacOS, iOS | Plain text, Rich text, Markdown, HTML, ePub, PDF | Live Preview |
| #3 Byword 2· · · | 39 | 1 | MacOS, iOS | HTML, PDF, RTF | – |
| #4 Haroopad· · · | 37 | 1 | MacOS, Windows, Linux | HTML; EPub; ReStructured Text; PDF; RTF | live side-by-side |
| #5 typora· · · | 27 | 2 | Mac OSX; Windows; Linux | HTML; HTML (pure); PDF; Word; OpenOffice; RTF; Epub; LaTeX; Media Wiki; ReStructuredText; Textile; OPML | WYSIWYG |
| #6 Atom· · · | 34 | 7 | Windows, Mac, Linux | HTML | live side-by-side |
Pro Works online and offline
StackEdit works within your browser. You need internet access to connect to the website, but once it's loaded, the site does not require an internet connection - you will be able to edit and save files locally. Additionally, you can use Fluid to turn it into a native desktop application.
Pro Syncs via Dropbox and Drive
Files can be synchronized through Dropbox and Drive.
Pro Real-time preview
The preview shows in a collapsible pane on the right hand side.
Con Saves files in browser's local storage
Local storage is limited and if the browser crashes the text can be lost.
Con Cannot be accessed while being offline
Even though the editor itself works offline, you need internet access to open the website and the editor.
Con Lacks a good integrated spell checker
Uses the built-in browser spell checker which may not be as good as spell checkers other editors have. Depending on the browser, of course.
Pro Does not distract the user
Ulysses has a clean, unobtrusive, easy to overview interface that allows focusing on writing. By default it's split up in 3 panes with sidebar, sheet pane and content pane from left to right. Unnecessary panes can be hidden.
Pro Highly customizable
A few themes are baked in and a big selection of user-contributed styles to choose from are available on the Ulysses Style Exchange.
Con Cannot render code blocks
You can go around this limitation, but it is complex and not so pretty looking as it is in other Markdown Editors.
Con Overwrites imported markdown files
When previously written markdown files are imported, they're converted to Ulysses' version of Markdown and original files are overwritten.
Pro Syncs using iCloud and Dropbox
Documents can be synced using iCloud or Dropbox from within the editor for use across all devices.
Pro Great Markdown support without being intrusive
Byword de-emphasizes the syntax itself, while emphasizing its effects. It appropriately adds style, like italic and bold, to text that's designated by markdown and dims the syntax so it does not getting in the way of comprehension. Additionally, there are commonly used hotkeys (⌘b, ⌘i, etc) th...
Con Publishing requires additional in-app purchase
The feature to publish Markdown files to web services costs and additional $5 of in-app purchase.
Con Limited customizability
One of the things that makes Byword so easy to use is the fact that it needs very little setup and option-tweaking. However, that severely limits the ability to customize the editor itself. For example, there are only two themes available, a light one and a dark one.
Pro Very customizable
Haroopad has multiple available themes to choose from and new ones can be easily built with CSS.
Pro Allows embedding content from a wide variety of sources
Content from YouTube, Twitter, Vimeo, Slideshare, Flickr, Instagram, Soundcloud, Wikipedia and Pastebin can be embedded in the document.
Con Code pane is dark in default theme
Can be hard to read and a bit hard to find where to change it.
Con English translation is iffy
The software was initially developed in Korean for Korean users and later translated and ported to English. The translation to English has not been perfect and there may be some weird expressions and grammatical errors along the way.
Pro Hybrid interface
The editor and preview dual-pane setup typical of desktop Markdown editors are gone; instead, a singular interface makes for a WYSIWYG experience. This streamlines the workflow and encourages direct manipulation.
Pro Live preview
Typora immediately renders what's typed on the screen in Markdown format. This helps users to have a better understanding of how their document is being formatted.
Con In beta
Typora is still in beta and may be prone to changes or bugs.
Pro Live split-screen preview
You can access the preview by going Packages > Markdown > Toggle Preview.
Pro Great mixed RTL/LTR implementation
Correctly displays mixed RTL/LTR within the same document.
Con Has difficulty with large text files
Tends to crash or hang with large >(10MB) text files, making it less useful as a general text editor.
Con Slow performance
Text is rendered within a web view - an unnecessary step which just taxes the resources and slows the performance down.
Pro Free and open source
MacDown is a free and open source editor influenced by Mou. It's released under the MIT license.
Pro Real-time split-screen preview
MacDown's main view is split into two panels. The user types on the left and the Markdown is rendered on the fly in the right panel. This helps users to better understand the way they are formatting their document.
Con Not very versatile
MacDown is not very powerful or versatile. It's not customizable or extendable. This is what makes it so simple, but it's not for people who want more from their tools.
Con The Markdown preview is rather heavy on the CPU
The Markdown preview needs a lot of resources to keep rendering on-the-fly after each keystroke. A single keystroke in the editor panel may trigger up to 5 seconds of max-CPU usage.
Pro Has real-time split-screen preview
Mou is split into two columns. It displays raw Markdown on the left and formatted text on the right. Text on the right will update in near real-time as raw Markdown is written.
Pro Advanced text editing
Mou has word auto-completion (accessed via 'esc') for English words, text transformation such as conversions to uppercase, blockquote or an h1 heading, html entities (sych as <’s, &’s and spaces) that can be added anywhere in the text and customizable keyboard shortcuts for everythi...
Con No longer maintained
The latest version was released in 2014, version 1.0 was announced for 2015 but was never released. The app is not compatible with macOS Sierra.
Con Only free until 1.0 release
Once 1.0 is released (still unreleased as of May 2017, release was planned for August 2015), Mou will cost $30. It can currently be pre-ordered for half the price.
Pro Can help the user focus only on the sentence they are writing
Enabling Focus Mode will dim the whole text except the sentence you are currently writing on.
Pro Noise free writing experience
The Noise Free Writing Experience is one of the first approaches to create a first class distraction-free environment. The feature hides the Mac program bar when you start writing.
Con Only uses monospace fonts
iA writer only uses monospaced fonts since it helps users focus on what they are writing. But some people who don't really like this type of font and find it unpleasant may not like this decision.
Pro Support for elastic tabstops
Elastic tabstops are used to align text automatically during writing. When there's a change in the text, MultiMarkdown Composer automatically aligns all lines both on the beginning and end of them.
Pro Table of Contents support
Generates a table of contents based on the headers in the Markdown file being worked on.
Con Table of contents gets out of sync sometimes
If you keep the auto-generated table of contents open while you work it gets out of sync, meaning items in the table of contents (at the end) disappear until you restart the program.
Con The way the preview shows images is inconsistent
The preview is a bit inconsistent with images. Sometimes it shows the image correctly, sometimes it shows a blue question mark.
Pro Has a heading navigator
Hit ⌘ G to see document titles in a hierarchical view, type and use the arrows to navigate.
Pro Has a file manager
Hit ⌘ T to browse current folder, navigate the file system and manage your files and folders, type to search, right click to create / move / rename / delete items.
Con Not free
No longer free, try and buy
Pro Easy to use
MarkdownD interface is very simple for all users.
Pro Lifetime support
Cheap and free lifetime upgrades.
Pro Immediate Markdown rendering and preview
Texts immediately renders the formatted Markdown as you are typing it inside the text box. It's quite similar to a WYSIWYG editor.
Pro Supports multiple Markdown dialects
Unfortunately, this is a global setting for save (it can open any dialect)
Con Overwrites standard Markdown
Editing a preexisting Markdown document overwrites standard markup in it (for example, interpreting headings marked with leading "#"s and rewriting them with a trailing underscore line), adds extra blank lines between all paragraphs, and adds extra spaces at the head of unordered-list it...
Con Spell checking is not activated by default
There's a built-in spell checker which is not activated by default and is quite hidden.
Pro Can automatically convert Markdown to rich text
TextNut has two modes that it can switch between on-the-fly - Markdown and rich text editing mode. In rich text editing mode Markdown syntax is automatically converted to rich text. For example, typing bold will automatically convert it to bold. In Markdown mode syntax will be kept (with chosen st...
Pro Advanced yet easy way to add images
Images can be added by writing a curly brace ({) anywhere in the text and a popup will appear that will allow dragging and dropping the image in as well as customize the parameters without having to remember the proper syntax.
Con Rich text editing mode has incomplete Markdown support
Some Markdown elements don't convert to rich text in rich text editing mode. For example, for emphasis only * will convert, _ will be left as is.
Pro Distraction free writing experience
Focused's interface is quite minimalistic and allows you to focus on the writing and the writing only. There's nothing that may distract the user.
Pro Integrated Markdown viewer
You won't need an additional app to preview generated content.
Con Clunky interface
The interface is somewhat clunky and using it just isn't all that enjoyable.
Con No footnotes support
Doesn't handle MultiMarkdown footnotes well - or at all.
Pro Extended markdown support
Can be extended to support Multimarkdown, GFM-style code fences with syntax highlighting and even math rendering.
Pro Advanced file-management built-in
Can browse and open files and even has a built-in fuzzy file search.
Con Spell checking needs to be activated every time you open a file
In order to activate the spell checker you have to do so every time you open a file in LightPaper. There's no way to leave this setting on by default.
Pro Small but powerful
It has file tree, can post article, can upload pictures, can render in pretty preview themes, and is small and fast.
Pro Syntax highlighting in fenced code blocks
MWeb has syntax highlighting for some popular programming languages inside fenced code blocks.
Con No free version
MWeb costs $14.99 and is available on the Mac App Store. There's a free trial available but it's only for 14 days which may not be enough to make a good evaluation of the software before buying.
Pro Supports code highlighting
Has syntax highlighting for more than 120 programming languages.
Pro Has more features than just a simple Markdown editor
Quiver is a notebook and note-taking app akin to Evernote which happens to also be able to edit Markdown files. As such, it has a lot of useful features such as: image support, file attachments, web content support and more.
Con Much more than a simple Markdown editor
Since it's more like a note-taking app (and a note-taking app built for developers) than a Markdown editor, it may be a little excessive to use it only for its Markdown editing features.
Pro Powerful search syntax
nvALT has a simple text box at the top (similar to that of a web browser) and when you start typing inside it, nvALT immediately displays a drop-down box of all the notes that contain the text you are searching for. The more you type, the more the search is narrowed down.
Con Not very powerful as far as text editing goes
nvALT's strength is its search feature. It has some basic text-editing features such as cut, paste, find-and-replace and so on. But it doesn't have any advanced text manipulation features available in other editors.
Pro Direct post to Qiita
Files can be easily posted to and synchronized with Qiita, the largest Japanese community site for geeks.
Con There are some issues with the English translation
Kobito is an application which was originally developed in Japanese and later translated to English. The English translation is not perfect though.
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