Ask HN: Is there any beautiful Markdown editor? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there any beautiful Markdown editor?

45 pointszccm56 comments

Can anyone tell me if there is a beautiful markdown editor? I have been looking for it for quite a long time but I found nothing fit! Every markdown editor I found is ugly! Help! I can't write raw markdown without a beautiful UI!

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I feel like we’re coming full circle.

1. Existing rich text solutions require applications to edit, let’s make one that is so simple you can read/write in plaintext. Markdown is born.

2. Wait I need more features, let’s add more stuff

3. Hey this is too complicated to work with, I need an editor!

That being said, check this out: https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/markdown

Indeed!

I've had good results with https://typora.io/ writing articles a couple of years ago.

It was free when I was using it because it was in beta, it's now $15. If I needed to write in markdown more regularly I'd probably buy it.

Even if it was free and ad-free, doing Markdown editing on the cloud is inappropriate. Come on.

Typora is fully offline and works on real files, there's no cloud dependency here AFAIK. At most you can keep files in your Google Drive/OneDrive/Dropbox syncing folder to make it "cloud".

I, too, have used Typora for years whilst in Beta. I appreciated it's approach and features enough that I've paid for it.

Alternately, there's a free editor called MarkText that is maybe 85% there as compared to Typora. I use this on my work Windows machine, which is pretty locked down due to corporate policies.

References:

• https://typora.io/

• https://github.com/marktext/marktext#marktext

I quite like Ghostwriter: https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/

This! Unlike nearly every other editor it's not a PWA/electron. Brilliant editor

I'm the founder of a beautiful Markdown editor. Actually, two:

Nota - https://nota.md. It's a notes app but a lot of our users use it as a markdown editor. Nota is quite powerful as a markdown editor. It has a lot of smartness built into it.

Caret - https://caret.io. We started with this - a beautiful Markdown editor. We aren't implementing new features for it but if you are on Windows or Linux it might be worth trying out. We still have new users coming in.

A common feature of the two is that they both are pleasant to use. We've put a lot of hard work into the UX (which is also hard to market and one of the reasons why you probably haven't heard about us).

I signed up for the early version of Nota back in 2020 and it was still beta / invite-only way back then. Then, your website said "macOS beta coming in 2021" in 2021, and now in 2022 it says "macOS beta coming in 2022".

I enjoy Obsidian [1] daily. Perhaps more than a minimal editor, but very powerful overall.

[1] https://obsidian.md/

Neon 80s theme FTW.

If you use Emacs, these face tweaks (and `imenu-list`) I mentioned the other day help aesthetics and readability lot, IMHO:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32716762

One thing I forgot to mention is that Emacs's normal `M-q` "filling" works well with `markdown-mode` -- makes the text tidier, and makes nested bullets and enumerations more legible. (And you might want to `M-x customize-variable RET fill-column RET` to 79 or 80, rather than the historical default of 72.)

one day I have to rebuild this...

https://lepisma.xyz/2017/10/28/ricing-org-mode/

There’s Marktext [0] that is pleasant, feature rich and has a minimalist UI.

[0] https://github.com/marktext/marktext

FYI that page still links to https://marktext.app/ on the right under About.

I recently discovered Zettlr and frankly I'm pleased enough with it: cross-platform, does the job well-enough. You can always use an extension for VSC or emacs,etc. but when simply wanting to read a markdown file I use this one. Previously I tried Typora and others but I'm not willing to pay for a markdown reader. Maybe for an editor, whenever I'll decide writing (though I'd use emacs 9/10 times)

I always look for MathJax/latex support with at minimum a live preview pane (split view) and ideally WYSIWYG.

By this criterion, MarkText seems to be great. As others said Typora is similar but not OpenSource.

Nota is nice but has no side by side preview pane.

VSCode + markdown plug-in is good — not sure if it supports math. I also like the Marp plugin for making slides in markdown (it does have math)

I have drawn a blurry line of what constitutes an OK, beauty-ish, well-done tool. Beyond that, all are the same. I tend to continue with the one I got earlier that works fine. These days, I write quite a lot of plaintext/markdown in Obsidian and Sublime Text.

However, if I have to flush out an editor focusing on writing, then iA Writer[1] is beautiful. I got my copy long back when they released it and never had to pay additional to use it or a subscription. Have an attachment with iA.net as one of those clean, minimal design companies, and my long-term product design friend used to intern with the company.

1. https://ia.net/writer

Typora has an elegant, minimalist interface: https://typora.io/

Also has hybrid rendering!

No weird 2nd pane just to have the readable pretty markdown.

For android: https://jotterpad.app/ (also has a desktop app, never tested it though)

https://github.com/marktext/marktext is quite pretty and capable.

The remarkable thing about this is that it's primarily WYSIWYG (and, unlike Typora, FOSS).

Side-topic: I wish popular markdown renderers used indents and more pronounced v-margins for different levels of headings, and/or some more visual cues. Long md docs are so hard to read and skim through because h4-h6 are indistinguishable from text or are even less visible than it.

E.g. https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-session

Been really impressed with Nota http://nota.md (currently in pre-release)

Got a good set of features. Not that it does anything super fancy either, it's just really _nice_.

The timeline is interesting, they've been working on earlier forms of this app for about 10 years.https://nota.md/about-us.html

What kind of markdown app takes a decade to make?

Personally I'd say vim, but I respect those that will say emacs.

with emacs you need to go full org-mode :)

I've been using Nota[1] for the past year or so and it's been great. It has a clean UI and is more "beautiful" than Obsidian in my opinion. You can use it for free but it may prompt you to purchase a license from time to time.

[1] https://nota.md/

Macdown: https://macdown.uranusjr.com/

And here's a huge list: https://github.com/mundimark/awesome-markdown-editors

I’m working on https://github.com/thien-do/samuwrite :D it’s typography from iA Writer + vscode editor (monaco). You can try it on samuwrite.com. It also has a mac app.

Obsidian https://obsidian.md

I only use editors that render markdown with the markup. I found:

Desktop: https://typora.io/

Mobile (and Desktop): https://jotterpad.app/

Org mode with markdown export through pandoc

Export to markdown is available, though depending on the version it's not visible in the export list initially (it shows up after you manually call the export function).

    'ob-md-export-{to,as}-markdown

True, but I often have to format for github and it's simply easier to have pandoc within my flow to do things like not escape underscores, control heading levels etc.

There is an export to github flavoured markdown. It might help.

On macOS, iOS I can recommend https://ia.net/writer. There's not really space to be ugly as it's very minimal.

Markably would be it for me, it's a Progressive Web App, so it works offline.

[0]: https://app.markably.io/

When all you need for the UI is a text area to input text and a button to render the markdown, I am at a loss as to what would contribute to a beautiful UI. Is the question correct?

When not using VSCode + preview, I have found https://dillinger.io/ pretty good as you can download the result in various formats.

I think you can try out https://apps.apple.com/vn/app/samuwrite/id1629628152. Web version at: https://www.samuwrite.com/

Obsidian and Bear are both nice, with Obsidian operating on plain text files and Bear being able to export to such.

The only option: https://typora.io

Nothing else comes close. Maybe VSCode with extensibility and using that for other languages/syntax, but it’s amazing. After beta testing, I paid the $15 without a second thought

Neovim + Glow (https://github.com/ellisonleao/glow.nvim). It's beautiful.

For Mac, https://ulysses.app/ looks nice. I use it for writing blog posts.

StackEdit has fully taken over all of my Markdown note writing. It's a fabulous free little PWA that keeps things simple and gets the job done.

iA Writer

I always liked Dropbox Paper's pseudo-markdown. I also liked their font enough to buy a license for my own website.

vscode + markdown preview :)

this, I use it to write my CV since some years, works perfectly

Just use VS Code with a nice theme and some plugins. Or org-mode.

I've grown to really like Typora (appears to be multi-platform). On the Mac I feel we are spoiled, with Ulysses and IA writer, which are both also great, but cater to different tastes.

TextMate has a beautiful flower icon.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

vim is pretty beautiful.

This.

I think wanting a "beautiful" graphical Markdown editor defeats the purpose of the format.

It's supposed to be used as plain text while writing. Rendering to HTML when writing is finished is an added bonus.

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